The quest for safe, nutritious food that tastes delicious is an on-going adventure. All the gleaming packages of food at the grocery store and multiple restaurants to choose from home cooked food seems the safest. All that cooking practice is starting to pay off.

The safety of foods being consumed and in restaurants appears to be getting worse over the years.

“The food and beverage industry experienced the most dramatic spike in units recalled over the past five years,” according to the report released today.

“Food products recalled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration skyrocketed 92.7 percent since 2012, and recalled pounds regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which largely oversees meat production, jumped 83.4 percent in the same period.”

Bacterial contamination, such as Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria monocytogenes, was the most consistent culprit, and it worsened over the years. About 28 percent of FDA food recalls were for bacterial contamination in 2012. By the end of 2017 that number had grown to 31.3 percent.
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Major drivers behind the increases in recalls include technological improvements in food testing, factory farming and growing automation in food production, Stericycle reported.

Ready to use bagged lettuce for home use and in restaurants can increase the risk of foodborn illness. Other cut vegetables in plastic bags probably have similar issues.

Salads are among the most common sources of foodborne illness, and we’ve repeatedly seen how pre-cut, bagged salad products can harbor ugly pathogens like listeria or salmonella. A new scientific study finds that pre-cutting these leafy vegetables may actually be contributing to the growth of salmonella.

The study — published today by researchers from the University of Leicester in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology — found that juices released from cut and damaged leaves can not only significantly encourage the growth of Salmonella enterica, but also enhance the pathogen’s ability to attach to the leaves of the salad and to the salad’s plastic bag container.

In short: The juices released from cut salad leaves may help grow more salmonella that is more difficult to get rid of — to the point where washing the salad will not remove the pathogens.

Raw romaine lettuce has been off the menu at my house since first week of January. Have been using it in stir fry's and soups. Only buy head of lettuce no pre-cut bags.

Food safety experts at Consumer Reports are advising people in the U.S. and Canada to stop eating romaine lettuce.

During the past seven weeks, 58 people in the U.S. and Canada have become ill from the strain of E. coli O157: H7. One person in each country has died. In the U.S., the infections have been confirmed in 13 states — California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Vermont and Washington.

Another food additive to avoid trehalose a sweetener used to increase shelf life. Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections are often complication of taking strong antibiotics often in the hospital. The increase in life threatening infections may be related to the increased survival in the gut of two toxic strains of C. diff by eating foods containing trehalose.

With tinkering, syrup scientists at Japan’s Hayashibara chemistry company finally figured out a novel enzymatic method to make it on the cheap from starch. The method brought costs down to just $3 per kilogram. By 2000—just before the rise of C. diff.—the company got approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to use it as an additive in food. Approval for use in Europe came the following year. Manufacturers started pouring trehalose into a variety of foods, from pasta to ground beef to ice creams.

Brexit has UK farmers concerned about US meat imports.

Livestock raised for food in the US are dosed with five times as much antibiotic medicine as farm animals in the UK, new data has shown, raising questions about rules on meat imports under post-Brexit trade deals.

The difference in rates of dosage rises to at least nine times as much in the case of cattle raised for beef, and may be as high as 16 times the rate of dosage per cow in the UK. There is currently a ban on imports of American beef throughout Europe, owing mainly to the free use of growth hormones in the US.
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When negotiating outside the EU for a new trade deal, the UK will come under severe pressure to allow such imports. Over the summer, a row broke out over the potential for imports of US chlorinated chicken – bleaching chicken, according to experts in the UK, is a dangerous practice because it can serve to disguise poor hygiene practices in the food chain.

Ground beef has the highest risk for bacterial contamination. Commercial ground meet is generally a mixture from several animals and includes trimmings. To reduce the risk of contaminated meat can be ground at home from larger cuts that can be washed or surface area trimmed and not included in the ground.

My beef is processed at a custom butchering business and personally monitor the slaughter. Fortunately have not had fecal contamination on the carcass.

When in Portland a visit to Otto's Sausage Kitchen and Meat Market for sausages, canadian bacon and pastrami. They also ship.

How an animal was raised does effect the type of bacteria present.

The bacterial implications of beef production practices really emerged when the researchers tested the bacterial strains for resistance to antibiotics. Nearly a fifth of conventional ground beef carried bacteria resistant to three or more classes of antibiotics—more than double the number found in the “more sustainably produced” samples, and triple that found in samples from cows raised outdoors on grass.

If your immune compromised foreign travel guidelines will help keep you safe.

Other foods to avoid include:
Raw or undercooked meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs
Unpasteurized milk and milk products, especially soft cheeses
Prepared food that has been left unrefrigerated for several hours, especially food containing meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products
Food prepared by street vendors
Eat safe foods.
Thoroughly cooked fruits and vegetables
Fruits with a thick covering (citrus fruits, bananas, and melons) that have been washed in safe water and that you peel yourself
Thoroughly cooked meat, poultry, eggs, and fish
Dairy products from large commercial dairies, such as ultra-pasteurized (shelf-ready) milk or hard cheeses

Farm Report

When growing up the area was called by local - Poverty with a view. any business that relocated the to the area would lower wages to the prevailing rate. Growth was to enrich land owners and developers not laborers. Buildings now block the mountain views.

the cool season grasses and weeds are coming our of dormancy. All the animals have an extra bounce to their step this week.