There is one food poisoning bacteria which causes the most food poisoning in Australia and most people have not heard of it – Campylobacter jejuni. It’s typical symptom is diarrohea. The sources include; undercooked chicken, unpasteurised milk products and contaminated water.

It is such an issue that, along with Salmonella, it is the focus of all food safety sections of the Health Departments across the country. The Health Ministers across the country agreed some time ago that, as a country, we have to focus on reducing the number of cases of Campylibacter and Salmonella, and so actions are now underway to do this.

Food poisoning from Campylobacter may not just be a case of hanging around the toilet for hours, as with other types of food poisoning it can have long term and serious implications. Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) causes muscle weakness and may require ventilation if chest muscles are affected, and Campy is now being considered as one of it’s triggers.

It seems that this condition is not only something which can happen in humans, dogs are at risk of developing acute polyradiculoneuritis (APN), which is the canine equivalent of GBS.

So why is all this an issue now?

According to a new study done by the University of Melbourne’s U-Vet Werribee Animal Hospital, first published on Pursuit, the increasing consumption of raw chicken meat by our fur babies is increasing the risk of APN by more than 70 times.

Of particular concern is the increasing number of chicken necks being eaten by the furkids.

Dr Matthias le Chevoir, chief investigator on the project,said; “It is a rare but very debilitating condition where the dog’s hind legs first become weak. It can then progress to affect the front legs, neck, head and face. Some dogs may die from the disease if their chest becomes paralysed.Most dogs eventually recover without treatment but it may take up to six months or more in some cases.”

In this study, 27 dogs with APN symptoms and 47 without were studied and their owners interviewed about the diets, and behaviours. Faecal samples were collected and it was found that the APN dogs were 9.4 times more likely to have a Campy infection than the dogs without the disease.

Obviously it was only a small sample in this study and much more work needs to be done, but at this stage it looks like we need to  be careful feeding our fur babies raw diets, including chicken, particularly our small furkids.

The following is a media release from the Food Safety Information Council Ltd and is included here with permission.

The theme for Australian Food Safety Week, to be held from 10 to 17 November 2018, was announced today as ‘Food Poisoning – take it seriously!’

Food Safety Information Council Chair, Rachelle Williams, said 2018 has been a horror year so far for food poisoning.

‘The Listeria outbreak linked to Australian rockmelons earlier this year resulted in 6 tragic deaths and a woman miscarrying, this was followed by a recall of imported frozen vegetables which was linked to 47 listeria cases and 9 deaths in Europe. About 26 people in Australia contracted hepatitis A from imported frozen pomegranates and a woman died in June,’ Ms Williams said.

‘We know food poisoning is a serious issue so this year we are calling on people who have been affected by food poisoning to share their stories to help us get our food safety messages across. You can use this linkto let us know your story, either identified or anonymously, and how it affected you and your family.

‘During the 2018 Australian Food Safety Week we particularly want to help those who are at greater risk if they do get food poisoning such as pregnant women, the elderly and people with poor immune systems.

‘A downloadable package of material for use in Australian Food Safety Week events, including a draft media release, an online quiz and posters will be available in September 2018.

‘The 2017 Australian Food Safety Week ‘Is it done yet? Use a thermometer for great food, cooked safely every time’was highly successful:

• We produced a TV community service announcement that was screened 366 times and 3 radio announcements were aired 4,100 times, including to specific indigenous audiences.
• Our YouTube video was shown in 49,000 GP surgeries reaching an audience of 14 million a month.
• The media coverage reached a known audience of 1,186,076.
• 1650 posters, 3300 brochures and 682 fridge thermometers were distributed to community events around the country.
• A pre and post campaign survey found a 1% increase in safe cooking temperature knowledge and that cooking temperature knowledge was higher among people who owned thermometers.

‘We greatly appreciate sponsorship for this year’s Australian Food Safety Week from Food Standards Australia New Zealand for our radio announcements and SA Health for our consumer research. We are still seeking sponsorship towards the $10,000 cost for our TV community service announcement and YouTube video. If you are interested we would love to hear from you by email at info@foodsafety.asn.au or 0407 626 688’, Ms Williams concluded.

The Food Safety Information Council Ltd is Australia’s leading disseminator of consumer-targeted food safety information which aims to address the estimated 4.1 million cases of food poisoning in Australia each year that result in 31,920 hospitalisations, 86 deaths and 1 million visits to doctors on average each year.

Media contact: Lydia Buchtmann: info@foodsafety.asn.au T 0407 626 688

The following are current national product recalls notices from Food Standards Australia New Zealand and are included here with permission.

Black & Gold Mixed Vegetables 1kg

Metcash is conducting a recall on all available stock of the above product. The product has been available for sale in IGA, Campbells Wholesale and Independent grocery stores in Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales (Southern outlets serviced by the Victoria distribution centre).

Problem: The recall is due to possible microbial (Listeria monocytogenes) contamination.

Food safety hazard: Listeria may cause illness in pregnant women and their unborn babies, the elderly and people with low immune systems.

What to do: Any consumers concerned about their health should seek medical advice and should return the products to the place of purchase for a full refund. For further information please contact:

Metcash Consumer Support   1300 135 690

White Mill Pancake Shake Original & Pancake Shake Buttermilk

Problem: Aldi Stores (a Limited Partnership) has recalled White Mill Pancake Shake Original and Pancake Shake Buttermilk from all Aldi stores due to the presence of an undeclared allergen – Egg.

Food safety hazard: Any consumers who have an egg allergy or intolerance may have a reaction if these products are consumed.

Product details:

• White Mill Pancake Shake Original 375g, plastic bottle
• White Mill Pancake Shake Buttermilk 375g, plastic bottle
• Best Before 23/07/19; 24/07/19; 25/07/19; 01/08/19; 02/08/19; 03/08/19

What to do: Consumers should not consume these products and should return them to the place of purchase for a full refund.

If you are concerned about your health you should seek medical advice.

ALDI Food Recall Hotline on 1800 709 993.

I automatically look for things like cleanliness and temperatures when I am buying food, whether it be in a supermarket or a restaurant.

But I live food safety. A recent survey of 2000 consumers in the UK, seems to indicate that I am not normal.

The Food Standard Agency’s (FSA) runs a biannual survey to determine the public’s perception of food safety, amongst related issues.

The latest of these surveys shows that more people are concerned about chemicals and additives in food that in food safety. Food safety hit only 28 prcent as the biggest food related issue, environmental chemicals was at 30 percent and food additives was 29 percent.

Salmonella was found to be the most well known type of food pathogen with consumers at 91 percent, with the following in order; E.coli (85 percent), Norovirus (56 percent), and Listeria (51 percent).

Food poisoning from Campylobacter is the most common in the UK (and indeed also here in Australia) but the survey found that only 24 percent of those involved had heard of it.

So what foods were thought to be the big ones when it comes to food poisoning; poultry hit 79 percent and the following in order were; shellfish (55 percent), reheated takeaway food (46 percent) and eggs (37 percent).

So consumers don’t really get the food safety message and to the health departments across the world trying to get that message through, the results from this survey should be a wake up call – whatever method is currently being used is not working.

But what about business? Do staff really understand the importance of food safety?

The Food Safety Assurance and Advisory Council (FSAAC) and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) in New Zealand recently ran a telephone survey of 900 food businesses and the results are in many ways alarming.

Only 3% of those food businesses surveyed  reported data on their food safety performance back to their employees – so for most food businesses the staff don’t know what is going on in terms of food safety and why it is happening.

No food safety is ever going to be truly effective in a food business if the staff do not have buy in.

The Chair of the FSAAC, Michael Ahie said; “Food safety must be treated as a way of doing business and not just something that is discussed at a weekly meeting. This initial research provides a baseline that will be valuable for tracking improvements over time.”

Just as  concerning is the result that even though 95 percent of those surveyed had food safety related policies, only 69 percent actually had specific goals and key performance indicators to support those policies.

There is a food poisoning myth out there that you can always tell when something is not safe to eat because it smells off. Not all food pathogens create odours. So we cannot always tell that a food is not safe to eat by it’s smell.

However there some bacteria which do create odours and uneder the right conditions, that smell can be used to determine the level of safety of the food.

In Tasmania right now, a group of 30 volunteers are putting their noses to the test to help a researcher from the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA) test a new shelf life prediction tool.

The smelling is done as part of a sensory panel every few weeks on lamb meat samples which are past their expected shelf life.

TIA researcher Laura Rood said; “For my experiments, I am exposing meat samples to different bacteria and storing them past the end of the expected shelf life.  My research aims to extend the shelf life of sheep meat, which is really important given the time needed for export shipment. I’m working to help ensure Australia’s red meat continues to be a premium quality product in the international market.”

The research is part of the Principal Research Organisation for Microbial Ecology and Physiology (PROMEP), and is being done in collaboration with Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA).

Ms Rood said; “I’ve found that sheep meat goes off because of the make-up of the microbial community, as opposed to individual bacteria. Now I’m investigating if there are certain groups of bacteria that work together to cause the spoilage. Sheep meat generally has a shelf life of 12 weeks when it is stored constantly at minus one degrees and is vacuum-packaged. Beef, under the same conditions, lasts for about 24 weeks.”

The difference is most likely becauise of the higher pH in lamb, which can favour the growth of bacteria that cause spoilage.

Further information about the Shelf Life Prediction Service for vacuum-packed meat, and research updates, are available online at http://blogs.utas.edu.au/promep/

So what is that white liquid coming out of the long life packs of soy, rice or almond milk?

Is it milk or is it not? That is now the big question.

The word “milk” is used for these liquids, because it looks like it and it is an easy to use marketing tool, but should it be allowed?

Milk is considered to be the secretation of a mammalian female and that sure isn’t what comes when you crush soy beans or almonds.

So there is an ever increasing demand to not allow these products to be called “milk”.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the latest authority to be considering this issue, with it’s current review of the labelling requirements for the plant based “milks”.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said; “Food labels — including the name of food — inform consumers about what they’re buying, and standards of identity are used to ensure that foods have the characteristics expected by consumers. The information provided through food labeling must be truthful and not misleading.”

The main issue here is that nutritionally the plant “milks” are nowhere near the same as dairy milk, and there is a fear that people do not know or consider this when drinking them. This means that people who do not drink dairy milk may be missing out on vital nutrients, but believe that they are just fine.

France has already made the move toward only having “milk” used for mammalian milk, be it from cows or other mammals.

The real question is this – if we can’t call the plant based products  milk– what will we be calling them? It has have a name that makes it clear what it is, and yet attractive enough that people will want to buy it. Interesting huh?

Honestly, who really wants to run a food business?

I would never do it, as there are just so many things that the business has to do to make sure it meets all of it’s many legal and business requirements.

I take my hat off to those who step into the deep waters of compliance and manage to successfully swim without drowning or going underneath occasionally.

Anyone who thinks that running a food business is easy has absolutely no idea of what is involved.

Most who think they can start a food business have no idea what they are getting themselves into.

Not only do you need to make a food which people want to buy, you have to do it to a consistent quality, at the lowest cost possible, meet all the food safety requirements for your business and it’s product, you need to source and get the ingredients, meet all packaging and labelling requirements, you have to get it into places where customers can get it, you need to warehouse it, get it transported, minimise waste, meet all payroll and Human Resource requirements, ensure the workplace meets all safety requirements, pay taxes when required, market your product and business, develop new products to keep generating more sales, pay all your bills on time, find, train and nurture new staff, develop a business and strategic plan and work with it, somehow find time to pay yourself and between all that, and so much more, live your own life.

So why do people still go into starting their own food businesses? The answer is actually very simple – Because they believe. They just believe that people will buy their product and they can put a business together to do that.But belief will only get you so far, the rest is just plain hard work mixed with more than a little luck.

Something that all business owners must do is to keep up to date with new regulations and changes to existing regulations which impact on their business. An example of this is, in the near future all businesses which have a turnover of more than $100 million will need to include a section in their Annual Report about the modern slavery risks associated with that business.

This will obviously impact only a small number of food businesses in this country, but it highlights that each business owner must make it their business to keep abreast of what is happening around their business. They cannot just work in their business making whatever they produce, they must work on it and this will take most of their time, for it to not only survive but to grow and last more than the two years that most food businesses survive.

Food labels are required for all prepackaged foods in Australia and New Zealand. Labels are there to provide consumers with information about the food contained in the package, to enable them to make decisions about whether to purchase that food, how to prepare it and how long it will last.

Food labels are extremely complicated, with specific requirements for; the ingredients, the nutritional panel, the weight / volume, the manufacturer / supplier details, allergens, cooking / reheating, descriptions, shelflife, recycling information and storage instructions.

All of these requirements involve a lot of work by the manufacturer / supplier; testing of shelflife, testing for the nutritional panel, checking and double checking the ingredients, allergens and Country of Origin.

This is not even considering the requirement for the Healthy Star Rating, which shows by a series of stars the compliance to the required rating system. Once again significant testing is required to ensure that the correct ratings are shown on the label.

As of the beginning of July 2018, this became more complicated still with the new requirement for Country of Origin labelling, with words and pictures. The whole process involved in having the right information on the label about the amount of the food that is Australian or not, is mindblowing.

Now labels are about to have even more information added to them, with the push to change the recycling information to show exactly what can be recycled and what can’t. This will be done using a series of pictures to show what part of the packaged can be recycled and how.

If this isn’t enough, with the Senate Enquiry into Australian Obesity about to bring down it’s report, there is a strong move to require a picture on the label showing the number of teaspoons of sugar in the food. Surely there are other changes that could be made within the current requirements to do the same thing, as an example; modify the nutritional panel or the ingredient list to show the exact amount of sugar in a food.

These aren’t labels any more, with the amount of information required on them, they are libraries.

It is absolutely vital that consumers have the information they need to make an informed choice about the food they are buying and eating, but consideration has to be made for the manufacturers and the massive amount of work and money which is involved in ensuring that their labels meet all the legal and business requirements.

Calls for changes and additions to food labels have to weighed against the onerous task meeting the requirements for those labels.

Waste and the prevention of it, is all the buzz right now. This is a good thing but it should not be seen by anyone as just the in thing. Waste is bad and we should all be working consistently and constantly to first reduce, and then to prevent it.

Food waste is especially terrible as at least one third of all the food grown and produced is thrown away. This is a huge waste of water, resources, time and money and we have to stop it.

The food can be thrown away at any stage in the process;

• from the farm where it is thrown because it does not look like the perfect fruit,
• the factory where it has not been used or is scrapped from the process,
• the supermarket where it has not been sold by the required date (poor stock control and rotation),
• the restaurant / café where food goes past it’s use by date (poor stock control and rotation)
• transport where it may have been damaged,
• the worst wasters of all, consumers where we buy what we don’t need and it ends up being thrown out, or we don’t keep an eye on what is in our fridge and the food gos past it’s use by date.

Manufacturers and other food businesses now have several options to use to reduce food waste and help their communities at the same time. Those with low incomes can access cheap food through Food Pantries which get their food for no cost from FoodBank. This food comes from the factories and supermarkets.

Another business, called Yume, has started an online marketplace, which allows suppliers to sell surplus food to other food businesses and events at a discount.

Yume’s founder and CEO Katy Barfield said; “Via the Yume platform the supplier was able to find a buyer. We’re urgently calling for all food manufacturers and primary producers to join Yume, so that we can help prevent this food, which takes time, money and valuable resources to grow, pick, pack and distribute, from going to waste.”

Even though giving it to charity or selling at a discount are great ways to move food on so it is not wasted, the fundamental problem still remains – food businesses still have food which is potentially wasted. They need to better manage their processes to prevent this from happening

Following are three product recalls currently in place. The information is included here with permission from Food Standards Australia New Zealand.

Bovells Bakery Bread

Mias Wholemeal Sandwich 650gm

Mias Wholemeal Toast 650gm

West Fresh Wholemeal Sandwich 650gm

Regal Wholemeal Sandwich 650gm

De Campo Wholemeal Toast 650gm

Bovells Plain Wrap Wholemeal Sandwich 650gm

All with BEST BEFORE28JUL

The recalled products have been available for sale in Coles, Woolworths, IGA and Farmer Jacks Supermarkets in Western Australia.

Problem: The recall is a precautionary measure due to possible metal contamination in the product

Food Safety Hazard: Food products containing foreign matter may cause injury if consumed

What to do: Consumers should not eat these products and should return them to the place of purchase for a full cash refund.

Contact details: For further information contact:

Jon Davies Bakery Manager

Bovells Bakery

08 9493 8600

Black and Gold Crumbed Fish Portions 500gm

Best Before 27/4/2019 and 06/05/2019 

Metcash is conducting a recall of the above product.

The product has been available for sale at IGA, Campbells Wholesale & other Independent Grocers nationally.

Country of origin: China

Problem: The recall is due to foreign object contamination – metal.

Food safety hazard: Food products containing metal may cause injury if consumed.

What to do: Any consumers concerned about their health should seek medical advice and should return the product to the place of purchase for a full refund. For further information please contact:

Metcash

1300 135 690

Blackall Gold Washed Rind 200g

Best Before 10.09.18

Woombye Cheese Company is conducting a recall of the above product. The product has been available for sale at fresh food markets, grocers and selected IGA stores in QLD.

Problem: The recall is due to microbial contamination – high E.coli count.

Food safety hazard: Food products contaminated with E.coli may cause illness if consumed.

What to do: Any consumers concerned about their health should seek medical advice. Consumers should return the product to the place of purchase for a full refund.

For further information please contact:

Woombye Cheese Company

0413 808 489

https://www.woombyecheese.com/