Robin: Wow Batman, did you read in US Food Safety.com blog that hazelnuts have been recalled in several states? US Food Safety is way better than the Daily Planet.

Batman: Nut Recall has attacked our fair country once again. We have to alert the masses.

Robin: Do you think it will be as large as the peanut and pistachio recalls?

Batman: I don’t know Robin but we have to let the country know what hazelnuts are good and which are not. It is our sworn duty.

Robin: Holy filberts Batman, that could take all night. I have to Christmas shop.

Batman: We took an oath. Now let’s rev up the Batmobile, and get going.

copyright 2009 US Food Safety Corporation

IF YOU ARE A MANUFACTURER THAT USED HAZELNUTS NOT USED IN THIS RECALL, WE’D LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU. PLEASE CONTACT US IMMEDIATELY.

Not again. Another nut recall. This time it’s hazelnuts. Should we rally the troops in the event and be prepared to work night and day in the chance that THIS could be another Peanut Corporation of America? or a Pistachio recall?  What will we do?  

Williamette Shelling of Newberg, Oregon recalling 114,350 pounds of shelled hazelnuts nationwide because of potential contamination with salmonella. Unshelled hazelnuts are not affected by the recall.

 brands: Willamette Filbert Growers Shelled Hazelnuts or Meridian Organic Hazelnuts with lot code numbers 289091A and 311091A

 AND

 brands: Kunze Farms, Evonuk Oregon Hazelnuts, Canadian Hazelnuts, and Firestone Farms.

A phone call to Willamette Shelling at the time of this posting went unreturned.

 If you are cooking with hazelnuts, BEWARE! Tell your friends.

After a tedious ride back from New York this weekend, I wanted to stop at the rest area for a bottle of water on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

 McDonald’s Corporation – Charlton East

508 248-0517

P O Box 426

Charlton, MA  01508

 My husband who was driving, offered to go in and retrieve one for me. The real motive was to get a snack. When he returned to the car with a packaged cookie, he relayed the following story to me in excruciating detail.

He wanted to get pretzel, Auntie Anne’s had the fresh baked pretzel smell that you can only get when you have traveled for three hours. These pretzel franchises make the pretzels on site. The three or four people in line smelled the freshly baked pretzels, as well as my husband, so waiting in line made the anticipation that much greater.

He watched the food handlers use the food handling gloves to serve the pretzels. Another woman took the money and so it went until they had to make the pretzels. The money handler was also the pretzel maker of the evening. Here is the gross part.

 The pretzel maker (aka cashier) didn’t change her gloves after taking the money and handled raw pretzel dough. My husband was totally disgusted (remember the pretzel smell) and bought a pre-packed cookie.

 According to the website, there are 1,000 franchises.

From the corporate website: “It’s the “love at first bite” felt by those who have tasted an Auntie Anne’s pretzel.

It’s the lines of people hungry for a fresh, hot, golden brown soft pretzel from the world’s largest soft pretzel chain.

It’s the collaborative spirit of a company that sees the value brought by every one of its franchisees and employees, a spirit demonstrated by the respectful and rewarding relationship between our franchisees in the field and our corporate office employees.

It’s a business model that’s proven through increasing domestic sales, average net store sales, and continued unit growth. “

 He handled me my bottled water and relayed this story for me to blog.

 http://www.auntieannes.com

The movie Sex & The City had Anne Meara eating a slice of pizza she found in the  trash, and saying that it tasted like garbage.  These freegans take dumpster diving for food to a whole new level.

The U.S.government doesn’t make any claims about the safety of food taken and then consumed from dumpsters. US Food Safety does not either. With the state of the economy, will this become a new trend?

Cambridge Massachusetts has been a hot bed of interesting ideas because of the magnitude of colleges. This one takes the cake.

For local ‘freegans,’ dumpsters yield bountiful harvest – Local News Updates – The Boston Globe

Chicken is safe because the National Chicken Council says it is. Who are consumers to believe, Consumer Reports or The National Chicken Council that represents the industry?

Consuming food can be a daunting task.

Safe Cooking
FSIS recommends cooking whole chicken to a safe minimum internal temperature of 165 °F as measured using a food thermometer. Check the internal temperature in the innermost part of the thigh and wing and the thickest part of the breast. For reasons of personal preference, consumers may choose to cook poultry to higher temperatures.
For approximate cooking times to use in meal planning, see the following chart compiled from various resources.

Microwave Directions:

• Microwave on medium-high (70 percent power): whole chicken, 9 to 10 minutes per pound; bone-in parts and Cornish hens, 8 to 9 minutes per pound; boneless breasts halves, 6 to 8 minutes per pound.
• When microwaving parts, arrange in dish or on rack so thick parts are toward the outside of dish and thin or bony parts are in the center.
• Place whole chicken in an oven cooking bag or in a covered pot.
• For boneless breast halves, place in a dish with 1/4 cup water; cover with plastic wrap.
• Allow 10 minutes standing time for bone-in chicken; 5 minutes for boneless breast.
• The USDA recommends cooking whole poultry to a safe minimum internal temperature of 165 °F as measured using a food thermometer. Check the internal temperature in the innermost part of the thigh and wing and the thickest part of the breast. When cooking pieces, the breast, drumsticks, thighs, and wings should be cooked until they reach a safe minimum internal temperature of 165 °F. For reasons of personal preference, consumers may choose to cook poultry to higher temperatures.

Partial Cooking
Never brown or partially cook chicken to refrigerate and finish cooking later because any bacteria present wouldn’t have been destroyed. It is safe to partially pre-cook or microwave chicken immediately before transferring it to the hot grill to finish cooking.
Color of Skin
Chicken skin color varies from cream-colored to yellow. Skin color is a result of the type of feed eaten by the chicken, not a measure of nutritional value, flavor, tenderness or fat content. Color preferences vary in different sections of the country, so growers use the type of feed which produces the desired color.
Dark Bones
Darkening around bones occurs primarily in young broiler-fryers. Since their bones have not calcified completely, pigment from the bone marrow can seep through the porous bones. Freezing can also contribute to this seepage. When the chicken is cooked, the pigment turns dark. It’s perfectly safe to eat chicken meat that turns dark during cooking.
Pink Meat
The color of cooked chicken is not a sign of its safety. Only by using a food thermometer can one accurately determine that chicken has reached a safe minimum internal temperature of 165 °F throughout. The pink color in safely cooked chicken may be due to the hemoglobin in tissues which can form a heat-stable color. Smoking or grilling may also cause this reaction, which occurs more in young birds.
Color of Giblets
Giblet color can vary, especially in the liver, from mahogany to yellow. The type of feed, the chicken’s metabolism and its breed can account for the variation in color. If the liver is green, do not eat it. This is due to bile retention. However, the chicken meat should be safe to eat.
Fatty Deposits
Chickens may seem to have more fatty deposits or contain a larger "fat pad" than in the past. This is because broiler fryer chickens have been bred to grow very rapidly to supply the demand for more chicken. Feed that is not converted into muscle tissue (meat) is metabolized into fat. However, the fat is not "marbled" into the meat as is beef or other red meat, and can be easily removed. Geneticists are researching ways to eliminate the excess fat.

Storage Times
Since product dates aren’t a guide for safe use of a product, how long can the consumer store the food and still use it at top quality? Follow these tips:

• Purchase the product before the date expires.
• Follow handling recommendations on product.
• Keep chicken in its package until using.
• Freeze chicken in its original packaging, overwrap or re-wrap it according to directions in the above section, "How to Handle Chicken Safely".

http://www.nationalchickencouncil.com/pressroom/pr_detail.cfm?id=125

According to a Food Administration & Drug (FDA) warning letter of November 13, 2009, Tyson Foods was warned about the significant violations:

You must conduct or have conducted for you a hazard analysis for each kind of fish and fishery product that you produce to determine whether there are food safety hazards that are reasonably likely to occur and have a HACCP plan that, at a minimum, lists the food safety hazards that are reasonably likely to occur, to comply with 21 CFR 123.6(a) and (c)(1). A food safety hazard is defined in 21 CFR 123.3(f) as "any biological, chemical, or physical property that may cause a food to be unsafe for human consumption."

However, your firm’s HACCP plan for "FDA Seafood Soups and Sauces" does not list the food safety hazard of pathogen growth and toxin formation, specifically the potential for Clostridium botulinum toxin formation.

[FDA] investigators observed shrimp and crab meat thawing in your firm’s (b)(4) Storage cooler at temperatures between 40-55°F for approximately 18 hours, in preparation for manufacturing your firm’s Seafood Gumbo. Consequently, in order to address the hazard of pathogen growth and potential toxin formation, we suggest that your revised HACCP plan include a critical control point (CCP) for the refrigerated storage/thawing step. We additionally suggest that products be continuously maintained at or below 40°F in order to control pathogen growth and toxin formation during these extended time periods when the products are held under refrigerated conditions.

Tyson e-mailed FDA that had corrected the problems but not to FDA’s satisfaction in compliance with a new HACCP plan.

What makes this significant is that Tyson had 15 working days to respond, and, according to various news sources, Tyson has not commented.

Tyson Foods, Inc

In an article in today’s online edition of The Tampa Tribune, discusses consumer steps to control food safety.

By  MARY SHEDDEN | Published: November 30, 2009

None of us wants to think about the invisible organisms lurking in our lunch, but bacterial and parasitic pathogens sicken more than 76 million Americans a year, including 325,000 who head to the hospital. And foodborne illness kills 5,000 people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Consumers have no control over some of the contamination, something we learned from high-profile recalls of peanut butter, ground beef and fresh spinach. But a lot can be done to control contamination.

For example, people don’t realize as much as half of all the chicken they buy contains some kind of bacterial or parasitic pathogen, says Glenn Morris, director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida.

That isn’t so scary if you recall proper cleaning and cooking practices learned from Grandma or in home economics class, he says. “Good food handling in the kitchen can take care of 95 percent of the problem.”

Those practices — washing cutting boards, plates and utensils with hot water — are the first line of defense in dealing with raw meats. The Food and Drug Administration suggests cleaning cutting surfaces with a solution of one teaspoon of chlorine bleach to one quart of water. Produce also should be thoroughly scrubbed and washed with water, and dried with a clean cloth or paper towel before eating.

“It’s simple stuff,” Morris says.

So simple, people may have grown complacent. But as concern about the government’s role in food safety increases, the public may be taking those food safety tips more seriously. A recent consumer survey found that 73 percent of adults polled were as concerned about food safety as the war on terror.

According to the American Society for Quality survey of nearly 2,100 Americans, 61 percent felt the current U.S. food recall process was fair or poor. That response likely reflects the increased use of corporate farms or processing plants in American food production. For example, if one chicken at a farm of 20,000 is contaminated, the risk for spreading illness, and a subsequent recall, is higher than it would be at a small, local farm.

“We’ve moved into a factory farming age,” says Morris, whose institute looks at how pathogens and infectious disease affect humans, plants and animals. “We’ve created new opportunities for food-borne illness to get into the food supply.”

Morris is most concerned about E. coli O157:H7, which emerged in humans in just the past 30 years. It has been responsible for multiple high-profile recalls in recent years, from ground beef to fresh spinach. Recalls related to that illness have been responsible in part for changes to federal legislation, including the Food Safety Enhancement Act, which is undergoing review in the U.S. Senate.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees meat and poultry, and the FDA is responsible for inspecting all other foods and drugs.

Morris says regardless of politics, many Americans understand the need for government food inspectors. The consumer survey went a step further: 82 percent of respondents said the food industry should be required to follow international food safety standards.

Morris says the final solution involves a balance of oversight and commonsense.

“Be aware there’s a risk and the government is working to reduce the risk,” Morris says. “But also know that humans have dealt with foodborne illness for millennia.”

 No. Bacteria exist everywhere in nature. They are in the soil, air, water, and the foods we eat. When they have nutrients (food), moisture, and favorable temperatures, they grow rapidly, increasing in numbers to the point where some types of bacteria can cause illness. Bacteria grow most rapidly in the range of temperatures between 40 and 140 °F, some doubling in number in as little as 20 minutes. Some types will produce toxins that are not destroyed by cooking.

Pathogenic bacteria do not generally affect the taste, smell, or appearance of a food. In other words, one cannot tell that a food has been mishandled or is dangerous to eat. For example, food that has been left too long on the counter may be dangerous to eat, but could smell and look fine. If a food has been left in the “Danger Zone” – between 40 and 140 °F – for more than 2 hours, discard it, even though it may look and smell good. Never taste a food to see if it is spoiled.
(Sources: Keeping Food Safe During an Emergency; Fighting BAC!® by Chilling Out; Refrigeration and Food Safety.)

My son and I were reviewing the Thanksgiving menu and he said, What about the stuffing, that’s the best part”.

 I guess all the other sides, appetizers, and turkey that I am preparing don’t hold a candle to the stuffing.

Here are last minute stuffing reminders.

Whether it is cooked inside or outside the bird, all stuffing and dressing recipes must be cooked to a minimum temperature of 165ºF. For optimum safety, cooking your stuffing in a casserole dish is recommended.

Stuffing should be prepared and stuffed into the turkey immediately before it’s placed in the oven.

Mix wet and dry ingredients for the stuffing separately and combine just before using.

The turkey should be stuffed loosely, about 3/4 cup stuffing per pound of turkey.

Any extra stuffing should be baked in a greased casserole dish.

Post T-Day meal:

Refrigerate foods quickly because harmful bacteria grow rapidly at room temperature.

Refrigerate leftovers and takeout foods—and any type of food that should be refrigerated—within two hours. That includes pumpkin pie.

Set your refrigerator at or below 40ºF and the freezer at 0ºF. Check both periodically with an appliance thermometer.

Never defrost food at room temperature. Food can be defrosted safely in the refrigerator, under cold running water, or in the microwave. Food thawed in cold water or in the microwave should be cooked immediately.

Allow the correct amount of time to properly thaw food. For example, a 20-pound turkey needs four to five days to thaw completely when thawed in the refrigerator.

 A good rule to follow is, when in doubt, throw it out.Lastly, leftovers should be used within three to four days.

From  the staff at US Food Safety, have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving.

According to various news sources, China executed a dairy farmer and a milk salesman Tuesday for their roles in the sale of contaminated baby formula — severe punishments that Beijing hopes will assuage public anger, reassure importers and put to rest one of the country’s worst food safety crises.

The men were the only people put to death in a scheme to boost profits by lacing milk powder with the industrial chemical melamine; another 19 were convicted and received lesser sentences. At least six children died after drinking the adulterated formula, and more than 300,000 were sickened.

Beijing is eager to prove it has responded swiftly and comprehensively to eliminate problems in its food production chain that have spawned protests at home and threatened its export-reliant economy. The milk powder contamination struck a nerve with the public because so many children were affected, but was only one in a series of product recalls and other embarrassing disclosures of lax public health safeguards.

Melamine, which is used in the manufacture of plastics and fertilizers, has also been found added to pet food, eggs and fish feed, although not in levels considered dangerous to humans. The chemical, which like protein is high in nitrogen, fooled inspectors. It can cause kidney stones and kidney failure.

China has since tightened regulations and increased inspections on producers and exporters in cooperation with U.S. officials, who have noted a drop in the number of product recalls on Chinese exports.

But Beijing continues to struggle to regulate countless small and illegally run operations, often blamed for introducing chemicals and additives into the food chain. The country has 450,000 registered food production and processing enterprises, but many — about 350,000 — employ just 10 people or fewer. The U.N. said in a report last year that the small enterprises present many of China’s greatest food safety challenges.

Zhang Yujun, the farmer, was executed for endangering public safety, and Geng Jinping for producing and selling toxic food, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Much of the phony protein powder that Zhang and Geng produced and sold ended up at the now-defunct Sanlu Group Co., at the time one of China’s biggest dairies.

Xinhua said an announcement of the execution had been issued by the Shijiazhuang Municipal Intermediate People’s Court, although a court clerk who answered the phone Tuesday said he was unable to confirm the sentences had been carried out. Most executions in China are performed by firing squad.

Of the others tried and sentenced in January in connection with the scandal, Sanlu’s general manager, Tian Wenhua, was given a life sentence after pleading guilty to charges of producing and selling fake or substandard products.

Three other former Sanlu executives were given between five years and 15 years in prison.

Outrage spread quickly after news of the doctored milk broke in September of last year, both because of the extent of the contamination and allegations that the government prevented the news from breaking until after the Olympic Games in Beijing ended.

The cover-up accusations were never publicly investigated, and authorities have since harassed and detained activist parents pushing lawsuits demanding higher compensation and the punishment of government officials. Families were offered a one-time payout — ranging from of 2,000 yuan ($293) to 200,000 yuan ($29,000), depending on the severity of the case — in exchange for not pursuing lawsuits.

Tuesday’s executions brought some comfort to Li Xinquan, who lost one of her 8-month-old twin daughters who was fed with melamine-tainted formula from Sanlu. Li has waged a so-far futile campaign to force authorities to admit negligence and provide fair compensation.

“They deserved it. This is the punishment they have received from the government,” said Li, whose other daughter survived because she was breast fed.

Another parent, Wang Zhenping, also voiced satisfaction with the executions, reflecting strong support for the death penalty in China, which executes more people annually than the rest of the world combined.

Wang, who said his 2-year-old son appeared to have recovered from the melamine poisoning, had rejected the compensation offer and said he was now growing weary of the struggle.

“I feel like it doesn’t really matter now,” he said.