Latin names for bugs in italic please with Upper case first letter of firt word and the rest lower case please.) It was autumn _ Canberra’s best season. Sixty people had been invited to the wedding and spit-roast feast. The caterer inserted a roasting spear into a large chunk of beef in a dry-heat spit at 11am and it cooked for seven hours when it was taken to the reception. There it was reheated until the guests were due to eat 8pm.
Little did the 60 guests know that in addition to their serving of meat they were also getting servings of Clostridium perfringens, a nasty little bacterium, but fortunately for them not the nastiest of the Clostridium type. Now just as the guests were enjoying their juicy off-the-spit roast, so were the Clostridium perfringens. Bacteria like meat because it is high in moisture, rich in nitrogenous foods and has lots of minerals fermentable carbohydrates and favourable pH. The Clostridium perfringens went forth a multiplied. Some guests either batted on or returned the next day for lunch, at which they were served more of the beef and even greater amounts of the Clostridium perfringens. We know this because people talk. You can imagine the conversation. “”How did you pull up after the wedding, mate?” “”Jeez, I was crook. I chundered my heart out. I swear, I’m going off the grog.” “”So did my mum, she doesn’t even drink.” “”Yeah. That’s odd. Bill’s old man’s been off the grog for months, and he chundered, too.” “”Musta been the mushrooms.” “”Oh, beawdy. I can go back on the grog.” Anecdotal evidence suggests that a lot of food poisoning it unreported because victims put it down to booze. In this case, though, they slowly came to the conclusion that they got food poisoning at the wedding and reported it. And so it was that the ACT Public and Environmental Health Service wrote up the case in the Journal of Communicable Disease Intelligence. It told of 10 cases of diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, fever, headache and dizziness. They were lucky. It could have been a nastier bacterium. Next to that report was another report of food poisoning at another wedding reception at a tennis club in rural Victoria. In the Canberra case, apparently the spear was the problem. “”The spear was stored in a garage and could easily have been exposed to possible contamination by soil, dust, vermin or flies,” the report said. It gave a Holmesian analysis as to why the zucchini salad and other items were ruled out. The pH level was too low. And why didn’t we hear about this in the court pages of The Canberra Times under the headline “”Caterer fined for poisoning guests” (they don’t jail people in Canberra)? Well, the service believes that it is more useful to educate caterers so they don’t do it again. So you can breathe more easily if you attended a spit-roast function after March last year. Food poisoning costs an estimated $2 billion a year in Australia _ in lost work time, medical and other costs. Much of this could be prevented with greater understanding of what causes food poisoning and what lowers the risk of it happening.
The best example of how not to do that is contained in the splendid Fawlty Towers episode with the health inspector. It contrasts with the ACT service’s method _ Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, or HACCP. The Fawlty Towers approach is send around an inspector to check for dirt and prosecute if it isn’t cleaned. Remember how the inspector at Fawty Towers read out a litany defects in his Yorkshire accent: “”Dirty bench tops, cracked and dirty basin tiles, greasy and dirty stove top, dirt and cobwebs behind refrigerator” and so on. It may well be that the sort of people running this sort of kitchen are unlikely to handle food well, but even if the kitchen is thoroughly cleaned, it does not mean the customers will be saved from food poisoning. A much graver sin was to keep human food in the same place as pet food where it can get cross-contaminated. The director of the Public and Environmental and health Service, Alec Percival, said society had to get away from the clean-floors-and-walls mentality with food poisoning. His message was that the food poisoning was caused by microbes, not dirt. The big risk came when food was left too long a tepid temperatures _ higher than four degrees and lower than 60 degrees _ even if that was in a spotless kitchen. Mr Percival’s service wants to educate rather than prosecute. “”We do not want to be Mr Plod,” he said. “”Prosecution is a mark of failure, but is sometimes a necessary last resort.” Under the HACCP method, you identify the points of hazard and then reduce them.
A study of US hamburger-shop food poisonings, for example, identified 10 most common causes. They did not include dirty floors or even mice or cockroaches. The most significant factor was improper cooling _ too slowly and not to a low enough temperature. This was followed by length of time between preparation and eating; infected people handling food (not washing hands); inadequate reheating; improper hot holding; contaminated ingredients; food from unsafe sources; improper cleaning of equipment; raw-cooked cross contamination; and inadequate cooking. The basic hazards can be divided into biological, physical and chemical. The biological hazards can be further divided. Some of the most common are fortunately easiest to deal with. Vegetative pathogens like salmonella can be wiped out with proper cooking. Spore formers, like our unwanted wedding guest Clostridium perfringens and its more deadly cousin Clostridium botulinium (botulism) can also be cooked to death, but these also require further measures to stop them from growing to lethal levels or excreting a poison, after cooking. Storage must be at less than five degrees and cooling must be quick. Other biological nasties are harder to deal with. Viruses like hepatitis A come from sewage-contaminated waters (especially shellfish) and contamination through infected food handlers. Parasites, especially pig and sheep, require control at the farm. Freezing (to minus 18 degrees) or heating (to 76 degrees) or drying and salting will also wipe them out. Protozoa, like giardia, travel in water and milk.
Chlorination, boiling, filtration and pasteurisation get rid of them. Mould is dealt with by heat treatment and cold dry storage. Prevention techniques for all the biological hazards include: That food not be left at room temperature. Thaw in a microwave or fridge. That cooked stored in the fridge be covered and separated from raw food to avoid cross-contamination. That hands be washed before food preparation in a separate basin (not the kitchen sink). The physical hazards include glass, metal, wood, extraneous animal and vegetable matter, pests . Chemical hazards are pesticides, cleaning chemicals, toxic metals and PCBs, nitrates, and allergens. Physical and chemical hazards are usually created in the manufacturing process or are applied in growing. There is not a great domestic consumers can do except wash fresh fruit and vegetables before using them. We rely on health regulators to enforce preventative measures. Oddly, Canberra with its image of sterile cleanliness, affluence and bureaucratic control of every aspect of our lives is more at risk from cases of food poisoning than most places. This is because it has more two-income families than average. This results in a greater use of quick pre-cooked meals which carries a risk because pre-cooked food can get contaminated (like uncooked food) but is not heated for long enough to kill the bacteria and toxins.
Another factor is that Canberra’s affluence means more people eat out. Canberra has about one restaurant seat for 18 people; Geelong, for example, has one seat for 80. Eating out can increase risk because cooking is done in bulk and often pre-cooked and, unless the preparer has bulk cooling, food is more likely to be at tepid temperatures for longer. Further, Canberra, being only recently self-governing, has not developed the legislative regimes of the states to deal with food poisoning and other environmental health matters _ and is still catching up in some areas. General licensing for all people selling food in the ACT came into effect only last year; before that only some food sellers had to be licensed. Lastly, Canberra relies on Sydney food markets, and unlike most other large cities does not get nearby produce in directly. But this is true of many other place. This week I spoke to three environmental health officers (along with director Alec Percival) who explained their task: Liz Dean, Stuart Horsman, Tania Martin. They have several risk increasers: the modern food chain; the cultural influence on Australians’ diet; charities; the home. The long distribution and supply chains of food these days adds to the food poisoning risk. In earlier times people ate what was seasonal or went without. Now we want the full range of foods year round and with improved refrigerated transport and storage this is possible, but it increases the risk. In addition, better pathology, investigations and communications means that more illnesses are isolated as food poisoning (or other environmental factors) whereas before the illness or death was put down to flu or isolated disease. So when Fred died of legionnaires disease in 1970 it was put down to flu, not the air-conditioning unit. The longer food is kept higher than 4 degrees and lower than 65 degrees the more the bugs grow and the more toxin they release. Bugs especially like body temperature _ 37 degrees. (Bold) The cultural change: (bold) The bland Australian barbecue where meat was sizzled was not a problem. The surface of raw meat is always contaminated with something. You cannot slaughter without getting some of the gut content on the meat. Inside a chunk of meat, however, is sterile. So provided the outside is seared, all is well, for most bugs. (Pork and poultry need to be cooked through because of parasites.) But mince is different. It is laced with what used to be surface area. Never eat a medium-rare hamburger or rissole. With the cultural change, more Australians are eating chopped up meat, and to a lesser extent more people are eating raw meat dishes. More importantly, Australians are eating more rice, curries and eating out. Rice has an especially nasty bug called Bacillus cereus, which can survive cooking, but stays dormant or in controllable levels provided the rice is kept above 60 degrees or below four degrees.
In many restaurants, high labour costs make pre-cooking essential. Unless the rice is stored at the right temperature the Bacillus cereus grows. Weak fridges do not cool the rice throughout quickly enough to stop the bug growing. Quick reheating does not heat it throughout. Spices are riddled with bugs and need thorough cooking, and need to be kept hot. The cultural change of burning a bit of meat to trendy satays increases the risk. (Bold) Charities: (bold) When the sports-club barbecue goes trendy and shuns the T-bone in favour of satay and rice cooked at home by members, trouble festers. Luke warm rice; luke warm peanut sauce can be a sickening ingredients. Sometimes charities have rosters of (mainly women) who cook in spotless kitchens for functions at old-people’s homes, or child-care centres. It can breed trouble. Their ovens are not big enough, nor fridges powerful enough to heat and cool bulk food. The health service wants to educate charity workers about the dangers of microbes. It wants to know what sort of foods they are cooking _ not the recipes with method and amounts, but just the list of ingredients.
Cakes and biscuits are low risk; spiced chicken-rice salad is high risk. It also wants people who supply to the public on a database, so that when a Garabaldi mettwurst scare (or other recall) comes through they can all be notified quickly. The people being served are important. Older, younger and sicker people are more likely to succumb to food poisoning, as the Garabaldi incident showed. Charities, of their nature, tend to supply the sick, old and very young, so more care is needed. Charities are not charged for licences and the service will do courses for free, sometimes going to them. Charities are also difficult because staff (as volunteers) cannot be fired. It requires a great deal of tact to tell very good cooks about microbes and hand-washing. The service educates through things like posters, getting charities to say: “”All our new people have to read the posters”. It also runs the Food Industry Award and is looking at a certificate course at the end of Year 10. It hopes the latter spreads the message to homes. Liz Dean said:
“”We don’t want to be bureaucratic with lots of forms; it is too much work and not effective. We want to educate so people police themselves.” (bold)The home: (end bold) Functions at home can be a problem. People overload their fridges (especially with booze) and food is not kept at the right temperature. Also raw and cooked food is stored together. The raw can contaminate the cooked, which is not reheated enough to kill the new bugs. Cover cooked food. Occasionally people poison themselves at home and go out to eat later and blame the restaurant. Suddenly they become unco-operative with the service’s investigators. In general the service does not want to prosecute people who sell food for transgressions of the law. Prosecutions are a failure and people resent them, and often do not change their practices. The ACT has only about 50 prosecutions a year, even though it could do 3000. NSW, on the other hand, measures success though the number of prosecutions. If you are selling food in the ACT and want to do it properly with a licence ($50-$150 depending on the food type), the services message is to contact the service there is nothing to fear; you can only lower the risk and improve what you are doing.