Salmonella Blog - Surveillance & analysis on salmonella news & outbreaks

Last week, ABC correspondent Wendy Ryan nominated Alessi Bakery and Deli for her Dirty Dining list because the Tampa institution had racked up dozens of critical violations. Now, Action News has learned that a party catered by Alessi just two weeks ago made over 20 people sick with salmonella poisoning and sent others to the hospital.

Leslie Fields celebrated her 40th birthday with a party catered by Alessi. Just 24 hours after the event, ABC Action News reports, she became violently ill.
 
"After hearing that they had 75 violations just this year, they've had time and opportunity to clean up their act and make sure their food prep is where it should be," she observed. "So I'm very disappointed. This could have been avoided. A lot of people were sick from this."
 
The Hillsborough County Health Department is also investigating a second party catered by Alessi that made people sick.
 
Alessi owner Phil Alessi told Action News he's cooperating with the Health Department and doesn't want to comment until the investigation is complete.

Thirty people who ate a catered meal last Friday for Affiliated Community Medical Center employees in Marshall have been infected with salmonella, reports Rae Kruger. The state and Countryside Public Health would not release the name of the caterer, saying the incident is under investigation.

Spokesman Doug Schultz said two of those people were hospitalized. "So far, we identified 30 ill people," Schultz said. "People whose illness have similar characteristics, which is a suggestion of a food-borne illness."
 
Schultz said the state is investigating. He said about 40 to 50 people may have attended the lunch. Preliminary results show the people were infected with a strain of the salmonella bacteria.
 
The outbreak appears to be limited to ACMC employees who ate at the event.

NWI Times reports that Lakeshore Cafe opened at 6 a.m. Tuesday for the first time since a salmonella outbreak forced owners to close the doors last week.

Restaurant owners and employees sanitized the restaurant Monday and then took a handwashing and food safety course. County health officials were there when the Chesterton restaurant reopened.
 
Health Department Administrator Keith Letta said four more restaurant patrons had been confirmed as salmonella cases, bringing the total to 16 cases.
 
Four infected employees, one of whom no longer works at the restaurant, spread the bacterium through the food.
 
 

Employees carrying salmonella bacteria caused an outbreak that has sickened at least nine patrons of a restaurant here in late October and early November, reports the NWI Times.

Porter County Health Department Administrator Keith Letta said at least three of the Lakeshore Cafe's 29 employees and owners have tested positive, with some results still pending.
 
The positive tests mean that poor handwashing and hygiene, rather than bad food, led to the outbreak.
 
Before employees can return to work, state health regulations say they must test negative twice with at least 24 hours between tests. The restaurant closed on Tuesday and will remain closed until all food-contact surfaces, such as cutting boards and prep tables, are cleaned with a bleach solution.

Food poisoning is rampant in Australia, as it is in all developed countries, and it's increasing at an alarming rate, and the problem is not confined to fast foods.

Potentially lethal bacteria are turning up daily in a wide variety of foods. According to European surveys, salmonella now inhabits up to 75 per cent of chickens, listeria up to 15 per cent of soft cheeses and yersinia up to 50 per cent of raw milk.
 
Salmonella has also been found in other products such as fruit juices, bread and even chocolate.
 
Recent statistics indicate New Zealand holds pride of place in the food poisoning stakes, but Australia is not far behind. In recent years, Campylobacter cases have surged alarmingly. There were more than 14,600 new Campylobacter cases recorded in 2002, as well as more than 7,700 cases of salmonellosis and 3,200 cases of cryptosporidiosis. Critically, these officially notified cases are only the tip of the iceberg because many people with low-level symptoms don't seek medical attention.
 
In all probability, between 75 and 100 million people in the United States have an encounter with food poisoning every year. As a result, more Americans suffer from food poisoning annually than from the common cold. In Australia, food-borne pathogens probably cause at least five million cases of gastroenteritis each year.
 
In the final analysis, there is probably no such thing as pathogen-free food. However, we do possess the means of better production and safer testing, and we do need to be more vigilant.
 
Food-borne illness remains one of the largest preventable public health problems in this country. We need to be much more conscious of it and how our everyday behaviour might be placing us at risk.

Coronet Foods Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection one week after closing its Fulton facility. The bankruptcy filing came in the wake of the processing plant's closure on Oct. 22. According to the court filing, Coronet has until Dec. 7 to file its list of creditors and its financial statement with the court. The company has a deadline of March 1 to file its plan of reorganization.

At the time of the closing, company officials cited a sudden reduction in volume, which Coronet reportedly experienced following a salmonella incident in July involving Sheetz convenience stores. The incident involving Sheetz reportedly sickened people in Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland, where customers reportedly had ingested salmonella bacteria in Roma tomatoes from sandwiches sold at the store.
 
In the wake of the incident Coronet Foods, which supplied the tomatoes to Sheetz, was investigated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to determine whether it was the source of the outbreak. Following the investigation, Coronet Foods and its products were cleared of responsibility by the FDA. However, company officials said that adverse publicity surrounding the incident resulted in a loss of sales making it impossible for the company to continue to operate.
 
The closure of the processing plant put more than 200 people out of work as the Fulton-based facility was a major employer in the Ohio Valley for nearly 40 years. Additionally, company officials sold the western division of Coronet about four to six weeks prior to the closure of the Wheeling processing plant.
 
The future of Coronet Foods and possible next steps in the bankruptcy proceedings remain unclear.

Health officials in Porter County closed a restaurant indefinitely after five cases of salmonella poisoning were linked to the business.

The Lakeshore Cafe and Family Restaurant was closed Tuesday.
 
Two elderly women were in a hospital Tuesday in stable condition, and another was treated and released, Porter hospital spokesman Andrew Snyder told the Post-Tribune of Merrillville for a story today. Two other people who became ill did not require treatment, said Porter County Health Board Attorney David Hollenbeck.
 
Hollenbeck said restaurant owners Stavros and Kelly Mamouzelos were cooperating with officials.
 
Keith Letta, the county health administrator, said a sink that employees were supposed to use to wash their hands before preparing different foods had been removed during recent remodeling.
 
Mamouzelos said she does not believe the problem is related to the sink because it was not removed until after the diners became ill.
 
The sink was back Tuesday, and Mamouzelos said she hopes to reopen the restaurant soon.

A study conducted by Ohio State University food-animal health researcher Jeff LeJeune found similar numbers of food-borne pathogens and antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in samples of ground beef from conventionally reared cattle and from those whose labels claimed to have come from cows that didn't receive any antimicrobial agents.

LeJeune said the percentage of contamination and concentration of coliforms found in this study are similar to those reported in the Nationwide Federal Plant Raw Ground Beef Microbiological Survey of 1994. By contrast, E. coli contamination in this study was detected in only half as many samples as reported 10 years ago, and E. coli concentration among positive samples was lower than in the federal survey.
 
"This data suggest that the magnitude and frequency of contamination of ground beef with E. coli has decreased over the past decade, possibly due to the proactive efforts of the processing industry to control microbial hazards," he pointed out.

One year ago, more than 600 people were sickened from hepatitis A-tainted green onions served at a Chi-Chi's restaurant. Four of the victims would later die.

Since then, the Louisville, Ky.-based Chi-Chi's chain has vanished and more than 300 legal claims have been settled for about $10 million. But most importantly, experts and industry officials say, the produce industry and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are working together to make the nation's fresh fruits and vegetables safer than ever.

In 1997, the FDA set food safety and cleanliness guidelines for farmers and packers after a series of food poisoning outbreaks linked to fresh produce. This summer, a new Produce Safety Action Plan was adopted to cover the entire supply chain - right down to retail outlets.

Although the guidelines are voluntary, food safety experts say they will help an industry already policing itself in the wake of lawsuits spawned by tainted tomatoes, cantaloupes, alfalfa sprouts, green onions and other items in recent years.

Chi-Chi's, or what remains of it on paper in bankruptcy court, has sued Castellini Co. of Wilder, Ky., for allegedly supplying the tainted onions.