Wrong to Blame Costco for Fishy Parasite

In the news today the CDC is warning about the presence of parasites in food. In a recent post on Facebook, someone singled out Costco for "allowing" a parasitic worm to exist in fresh fish. It isn't wrong to have posted the comments or the video above, but it is wrong to make it sound like a unique Costco-only experience. Costco has been bashed and bullied all over the internet for allowing such a perversion of fresh food to occur. In fact, if anything, the parasite proved the fish was so fresh that the worm hadn't had time to die a natural death from dehydration, or excessive storage time.

Parasites can be killed with cooking

Here's the thing. It's NOT Costco's fault. Parasites are everywhere, in every type of food, in every corner of the planet. The existence of parasites is a primary reason we cook food before we eat it. The heat of cooking kills the parasite. You don't know it, but in your lifetime you've eaten millions of cooked parasites, and you liked eating them. You didn't notice because they probably tasted like chicken.

If food is fresh, and uncooked, the pesky worm-like rascals will remain alive and well, until the part about being uncooked changes. Fresh fish, meat, poultry, vegetables, fruit.....ALL have the potential for harboring parasites. Parasites are, potentially, in ALL fresh food, EVERYWHERE in the world.

The confusion comes from the perception of some people that the world is perfect, and so shouldn't have parasites. This misconception extends beyond the common citizen all the way to the nation's congressional leaders. The ignorance about food safety, shared by so many individuals, is the cause for ALL panic over parasites. Just a little knowledge can go a long way toward relieving parasite-panic.These are the people who can benefit, immediately, from food safety training :

• Food Industry professionals can't function properly without food safety knowledge.
• Teachers, especially for basic science, and most especially culinary skills must have a thorough knowledge of food safety.
• School students should not graduate without thorough Food Safety Training. 
• Babysitters, dietitians, care givers, all need Food Safety Training. 
• A congressman should not be able to create legislation about food safety without first being trained about it. 

By the way, that training is available for everyone, here at www.FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com.

So, the next time you spot a squrmy, wormy life form in a package of fresh fish, or any fresh food, just remind yourself that cooking will make it go away. Problem solved.

Thank you,

Andy Bozeman

Learn more about Food Safety.
Take the Online Training Class at www.FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

The 7 Day Rule

It's May 8th, 2014. In a favorite grocery store, a little while ago, I picked up a package of deli-prepared bean casserole. Bean Casserole is one of my favorite dishes, and I was very excited to find it already made and ready to eat. Then, as always, I checked the label for the expiration date to know how much time was left to safely eat this dish.

Pack Date instead of Expiration Date

Instead, I found a Pack Date. That's the calendar date on which the food was cooked and packed into the container. A Pack Date is as good as an Expiration Date, although it reads differently. It's part of one important rule about food life-spans : The 7 Day Rule.

The 7 Day Rule is not like the 5 Second Rule. Using 5SR is playing pathogen roulette with your food. There's really no amount of time so short that pathogens can't grab on to dropped food. Never rely on the 5 Second Rule. Always rely on the 7 Day Rule. This rule is an official guideline implemented by every Department of Health in the United States and many foreign countries.

It works like this : All recipes prepared in-house, meaning within the kitchen of a restaurant, facility, or a private home, which combine ingredients, whether raw or previously cooked, have a maximum storage life of seven days from the date and time of the preparation of the first ingredient.

For example : if Bean Casserole is the dish, and the green beans were cooked on May 1st, then May 1st is day one of seven, even though the final assembly and cooking of the casserole doesn't occur until May 6th.

It seems as simple as starting with the Pack Date of May 1st, and adding seven 24 hour increments, yielding an expiration date of May 8th. Get it? From May 1st to May 2nd is day #1. From May 2nd to May 3rd is day #2, and so on until May 7th to the end of May 8th is the seventh and last day. Since I was in the store on may the 8th, there's no problem, right?

But I said, "It seems as simple." It's not. In addition to an expiration date, there's also an expiration time, a specific moment signifying the death of food. There's one more part to the 7 Day Rule. In addition to the required Pack Date, another requirement is the Pack Time.

The Pack Time is the exact time, to the second, at which the proper cooking of the food was finished. The 7 Day Rule begins it's countdown at the Pack Time and ends at the exact same time on the seventh day. In the absence of a Pack Time, like my Bean Casserole, the official policy is to presume the most strict interpretation of a possible preparation time for the given day. That means, for my casserole with no stated pack time, the officially recognized moment of birth will be May 1st, 2014 at 12:00:01AM. Even if the cooking time was late in the afternoon on the 1st, if it didn't get written down, it did not happen.

That really changes things. From 12:00:01AM on May 1st to 12:00:01AM on May 2nd is day #1 and so on until we get to 12:00:01AM on May 8th, the end of day #7.

I was in the store on May 8th at 4PM, hours past the officially recognized last second of the food's lifetime. By the time I got there, the bean casserole had been dead for sixteen hours. Sadly, I did not buy the product.  So, why was it still in the store?

My grocery store of choice is a good one, well managed, well stocked, and the stock well attended. I'll give leeway to the deli manager for being in the process of policing expired stock. The expired casserole just hadn't been removed yet, but by now, at this writing, it probably has.

The point is that we all have to be aware enough of the condition of the food we consume to watch out for ourselves. Deli managers, or any managers, can't do it all for us. At least if we know the 7 Day Rule, and Pack Dates, and Pack Times, an expired bean casserole won't be the reason we expire.

Thanks

Andy Bozeman

Learn more about Food Safety.
Take the Online Training Class at www.FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

Training On-Tap : Svetlana Gertsenshteyn, New York City

Training On-Tap : Svetlana Gertsenshteyn, New York City

by Andy Bozeman

The Fusion Minute feature was only a few hours old when I met Svetlana Gertsenshteyn through an email. With a name like Svetlana, where do you guess I thought she was from? The assumption was so set in my mind, that even after she told me her location, for just a second I still thought, “Wow, I didn’t know Russia had a New York City.” She still teases me about it, occasionally signing her emails, “Svetlana-not-from-Russia.”

Svetlana is exactly the kind of person I was hoping to find with The Food Safety Fusion program. She’s motivated to teach, innovative in her methods, and unceasing in her search for better ways to spread education about nutrition and food safety.

One extremely useful innovation is a Food Safety “Assessment Tool,” which she created to help trainees prepare for the ServSafe® exam. She is generously making it available to the entire world for free.

www.learn-nutrition.com/servsafe

The “Assessment Tool” is interactive, which trainees find captivating.  It provides immediate feedback, resulting not only in assessing trainees’ knowledge, but also learning of Food Safety concepts. 

The “Assessment Tool” starts out easy enough, but becomes progressively more difficult. Try it yourself, and add it to your teaching arsenal. The positive results will be astonishing.

Svetlana has developed some other remarkable educational websites, which provide visual information about simple and tasty nutrition and food safety:

www.learn-nutrition.com/diabetes

www.learn-nutrition.com/blog

 www.learn-nutrition.com/vitamins

www.learn-nutrition.com/minerals

www.learn-nutrition.com/kids

Svetlana’s credentials are : PhD in education, MPH, and RD. Her educational and work experiences are from such illustrious institutions as New York University, Mayo Clinic, Sodexho Marriot, and the City of New York Department of Health.

You don’t have to be as accomplished as Svetlana to be a good teacher, but two things are important: the ability to recognize a good teaching tool, and the motivation to use it. Don’t miss this opportunity to follow in the footsteps of a truly brilliant educator.

Where I have to struggle for every iota of good sense, she comes by it naturally. So, now you’ll understand why I don’t think of her as Svetlana-not-from-Russia.

Instead, she is Svetlana Gertsenshteyn, Naturally Brilliant in New York City.

Svetlana’s Contact Information:

sgnutrition@yahoo.com

Telephone (347) 206-4862

Thank you,

Andy Bozeman, AHI 9200, CFPM

phone 334-834-1714

email AndyBozeman@FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

internet FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

Keep Your Pants On

by Andy Bozeman

This is about food safety, not clothing. I’m not writing about fashion fads, or cultural clothing preferences. I am writing about one of the points when food safety and fashion collide.

I recently visited a fast food establishment for lunch. When I walked in the door a male teenager welcomed me, as he promptly walked from behind the prep area to the service counter. I was impressed from the start. He offered a cheerful greeting. He was neatly dressed in a polo shirt bearing the company’s logo. A baseball-style cap covered his head as well as most of his close-cropped hair. The cap was on straight with the bill pointing forward, not slanted to the side or back. Best of all he was wearing gloves. He quickly took my order, accepted my payment, and even counted my change back (unheard of these days). I should add that he did all of that with the gloves on, not an uncommon practice.

But then…

He turned to go to the prep area, took two steps, stopped, and pulled up his pants. That’s when I noticed he was wearing pants that were so loose and so low they couldn’t stay up on their own. So, with his gloved hands he tugged the pants up nearer his waist.

But then…

He stepped to the prep table, and reached for a nearby box of disposable gloves, as he side-stepped toward a hand-washing sink. “That’s good,” I thought. But, he didn’t wash his hands and change gloves. All he did was set the glove box aside so it wouldn’t be in his way. As he stepped back to the prep table he pulled up his pants, again.

Then, the manager came out of her office. I waved her toward me and whispered, “Watch what he does.” She stood with me and watched.

The teenager finished prepping my order, and pulled up his pants.

He wrapped my food in wax paper, and pulled up his pants.

He needed a box which was across the aisle. Stepping toward the boxes, he pulled up his pants.

As he returned to the prep table his pants slipped down again. He couldn’t handle the process to fold the box and pull his pants up too, so he leaned against the table trapping the waist band with his hip. He placed the wrapped food in the box, and the box in a bag. As he stepped toward the service counter with a perfect I’m-happy-to-serve-you smile, what did he do?

I gave the manager a perfect did-you-see-that look.

She responded with a look that perfectly asked, “What?”

Any professionals and health administrators and inspectors reading this already know what I’m about to say. But there are thousands of school students who read Fusion Minute for homework then discuss it in class.

Gloves are worn to protect the food from the food handler, not the other way around.

Here’s what he did wrong.

• He handled money
• He failed to wash his hands and change gloves
• He prepared a customer’s order with dirty hands and gloves, which risked contamination of the food with pathogens that could make the customer sick
• He regularly tugged at his pants, which would have contaminated even new gloves. But, because he started the process with dirty gloves, every time he touched his pants the probability of contamination just got worse. The right thing? Every time he touched his pants, he should’ve stopped to wash his hands and change gloves. And, oh yeah…..he could wear pants that actually fit, and a belt to prevent the problem.

Here’s what the manager did wrong:

• Complete failure to notice anything at all.

Here’s what’s needed for both of them:

• Training, Training, Training, Training, Training!!!!!

So, that’s what I did. I trained both of them, right that minute. I refused the order and explained why. We discussed the correct order of events for hand washing and glove changing, but without pants tugging. The manager cinched the food handler's pants tighter with a safety pin, and then we started all over again with a new order.

I bet you’re wondering which franchise it was. It might’ve been one of those places that promotes itself by association with rank and royalty, like a king or queen or high level of military achievement. But it could just as easily be a place whose mascot is a rosy-cheeked child or a clown or a cowboy.

The point is that pantaloons that are too panta-loose, need to be addressed by everybody, everywhere.


Thank you.

Andy Bozeman, CFPM

phone 334-834-1714

email AndyBozeman@FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

internet FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

Next FUSION MINUTE release : April 25th

The next topic for FUSION MINUTE will be

A Tiny Hat on Big Hair is Useless

Future Articles:
 What is a RARE Hamburger? The Surprising Answer.

Training On Tap Chef Jodi Ferber
It Don’t Mean a Thing, If You Don’t Wash ‘neath That Ring?
Training On Tap Jeff Feldman

Raise Your Pass Rate

You Ate Where?

Restaurant OxyMORONS

Life in the Dump(ster)

Starting the Hand Washing Timer
HepaTITANIC Botulistic Septimacious Gastro-Amnesic Illness. Huh?

The Procrastinating Student

Food Safety Education Around the World
Regulatory Roundup
Who's Fused
Notes from 
Instructors, Proctors, and Administrators 
Around the World
Fashion & Food Safety Don't Mix
Blame it On The TV Cook
FASTING and Food Service? Are you Kidding?
What Happens in the Kitchen Stays in the Kitchen
Waiter, guess what's in my soup.
Please, come with me...........I have raspberries. 
......and much more.

Andy Bozeman, CFPM

phone 334-834-1714

email AndyBozeman@FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

internet FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

Announcement : REGULATORY ROUNDUP

In a few weeks I'll introduce a regular feature to Fusion Minute, REGULATORY ROUNDUP. The articles will focus on various jurisdictions and food safety regulations around the world. Initially the articles will focus on American regulatory agencies and administrators.


The goal is to help form a national consciousness for food safety education and awareness. 


The primary focus will be on these questions:

1. What is the greatest challenge in your jurisdiction, concerning the enforcement of food safety education requirements? Is it the public’s ignorance of regulations? Resistance to learning? Refusal to change? Procrastination by those who must meet the regulations?
2. How do you communicate with the various health department offices throughout your jurisdiction? Phone? Email? Other?
3. How do you communicate with those who must follow the regulations?
4. Do you have any methods to communicate with the general public?
5. Are you directly involved in the development of Food Service regulations, such as standard practices concerning bare-hand contact, temperature control, facility design, other?
6. Are you directly involved in creating legislation and statutes for food safety?
7. Do inspectors in your jurisdiction have the authority to instantly close an operation for excessive food safety violations?
8. Can you name one thing which would be the most help to you in your task of enforcing food safety regulations? This can be a policy, a method of communication, broader powers of enforcement, or anything else.
9. Would a partnership between your department, public schools, and food safety training organizations be a benefit in your quest to promote food safety education to everyone?

If you're a regulatory administrator, you're input is requested.


If you know a regulatory administrator with especially good ideas and high standards, please let me know.

Andy Bozeman, AHI 9200, CFPM

phone 334-834-1714

email AndyBozeman@FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

internet FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

Revenge of the Food Handler

by Andy Bozeman


This experience was related by one of my "live" students, a manager of a small seafood cafe'.
I wouldn't want it to get around, for obvious reasons, so help me keep it a secret.


A food handler was routinely late for work, then performed lazily or shirked his duties entirely, until the manager finally fired him. The manager's mistake was announcing the termination mid-shift, and giving the employee until the end of the day to leave. You should know that the employee didn't take it well. To compound the problem the manager left for a couple of hours, giving the fired worker time to formulate a diabolical revenge tactic.


When the workday had ended, the manager thoughtfully inspected the facility for signs of tampering, but found nothing. From then on he went about his daily routine of maintaining cleanliness, chemical precautions, and temperature checks for food and equipment, which included a freezer with a door-side-dial thermometer reading 0°F. Nothing was amiss. He was a happy manager. That is, he was happy until the health inspector dropped by.


The inspector noted the reading on the freezer's temperature dial. But, he also stepped inside. As he entered the walk-in freezer he commented, "It sure feels warmer than zero." Inside he took more temperature readings, then, when he compared them to the outside dial, he made one more comment, "You've got a problem. Your dial says 'zero,' but it's actually 30 degrees warmer.


On close inspection the former employee's plot was discovered. The ex-worker had painted a face on the dial that read 0°F, but he had set the unit's controls to 31°F. No matter what the temperature was inside the freezer, the dial would always read ZERO.


Now, it was revealed that the manager was lazy, too. He had become complacent, relying completely on the door-side thermometer, never taking the time to notice, let alone verify, the actual temperature inside the freezer.


Well, the ex-food handler got away with it, but not the manager. As part of his punishment for being a lazy temp-taker, he was required to re-take my food safety training course. That's how I got his story.


To his credit, he immediately added no less than 32 thermometers inside the walk-in freezer. Everyday he makes sure they all agree with one another and with the door-side dial, which has been unpainted. Lastly, he practices stepping into the freezer with his eyes closed, so he can learn to feel the air just like the inspector.


He said he learned two things. To please an inspector, learn to think like one. And to keep from being tricked again, learn to think like a vengeful former assistant. "I have to keep my eyes and my mind open," he said. "But I have to admit, painting that dial was a pretty good trick."

Andy Bozeman, AHI 9200, CFPM

phone 334-834-1714

email AndyBozeman@FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com

internet FoodSafetyTrainingCenter.com