sanitation

repeat-creepy-meat-problems-at-boar’s-head-plants-draw-congressional-scrutiny

Repeat creepy meat problems at Boar’s Head plants draw congressional scrutiny

boar's head, food safety, health, listeria, Meat, outbreak, sanitation / /

“The totality of these issues demonstrate a repeated pattern of food safety negligence that jeopardized Americans’ public health, and sadly, lives were lost,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

While calling the ongoing, repeated problems “appalling,” they said they were “less than confident” that the Jarratt plant could safely reopen.

“It seems your company continues to show a disregard for food safety and for the public health of the American people,” they wrote.

The letter was addressed to Boar’s Head Chief Operating Officer Larry Helfant. It ends with a request for him to appear before the Congressional Food Safety Caucus—which is chaired by DeLauro—to answer questions about what’s going on at the company’s facilities. The Congress members gave Helfant until September 26 to respond.

In a statement emailed to Ars Technica, a Boar’s Head spokesperson said:

“In our more than 120-year history, what happened at our Jarratt facility was the first time that such an event occurred. We moved quickly, aggressively and decisively in close collaboration with regulators and leading food safety experts to identify the root cause of the problem and implement enhancements to our food manufacturing nationwide to prevent something like this from ever happening again.”

The company did not respond to questions from Ars Technica about the letter from lawmakers or whether Helfant would agree to testify before Congress. The company has also not responded to questions about the problems identified at the other facilities.

This post has been updated to include Boar’s Head’s statement to Ars Technica.

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boar’s-head-to-reopen-plant-as-mold-and-funky-meat-problems-pop-up-elsewhere

Boar’s Head to reopen plant as mold and funky meat problems pop up elsewhere

boar's head, deli meat, food-borne diseases, health, listeria, outbreak, sanitation / /

Boar’s Head plans to reopen the Jarratt, Virginia, facility at the center of a deadly Listeria outbreak last year despite federal inspections continuing to find sanitation violations at three of the food company’s other facilities, according to federal records obtained by The Associated Press.

The AP obtained 35 pages of inspection reports via a Freedom of Information Act Request. Those reports cover inspections between January 1 and July 23 at three other Boar’s Head facilities: Forrest City, Arkansas; New Castle, Indiana; and Petersburg, Virginia. Overall, the reports reveal a suite of violations, including mold, condensation dripping over food areas, overflowing trash, meat and fat residue built up on walls and equipment, drains blocked with meat scraps, and pooling meat juice. The reports also recorded staff who didn’t wear the proper protective hairnets and aprons—and didn’t wash their hands.

In one violation, reported in the Petersburg facility, inspectors found meat waste collecting under equipment, including “5-6 hams, 4 large pieces of meat and a large quantity of pooling meat juice.”

The problems echo the sanitation violations recorded at the Jarratt plant before contamination with Listeria—particularly linked to the company’s liverwurst—caused an outbreak that led officials to shut it down. That outbreak spanned July to November of last year and sickened 61 people across 19 states, hospitalizing 60 and killing 10. Inspection reports revealed problems with mold, water leaks, dirty equipment and rooms, meat debris stuck on walls and equipment, various bugs, and, at one point, puddles of blood on the floor.

Amid the outbreak response, Boar’s Head vowed to make big changes to improve its food safety systems. Those included setting up a panel of food safety advisers, which included Frank Yiannas, a former Food and Drug Administration official, and Mindy Brashears, who served as the US Department of Agriculture undersecretary for food safety during Trump’s first term and has been nominated for the position again in Trump’s second.

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should-you-flush-with-toilet-lid-up-or-down?-study-says-it-doesn’t-matter

Should you flush with toilet lid up or down? Study says it doesn’t matter

bacteria, Biology, cross contamination, epidemiology, fluid dynamics, hygiene, sanitation, Science, toilet plumes, toilets, viral aerosols / /
Whether the toilet lid is up or down doesn't make much difference in the spread of airborne bacterial and viral particles.

Enlarge / Whether the toilet lid is up or down doesn’t make much difference in the spread of airborne bacterial and viral particles.

File this one under “Studies We Wish Had Let Us Remain Ignorant.” Scientists at the University of Arizona decided to investigate whether closing the toilet lid before flushing reduces cross-contamination of bathroom surfaces by airborne bacterial and viral particles via “toilet plumes.” The bad news is that putting a lid on it doesn’t result in any substantial reduction in contamination, according to their recent paper published in the American Journal of Infection Control. The good news: Adding a disinfectant to the toilet bowl before flushing and using disinfectant dispensers in the tank significantly reduce cross-contamination.

Regarding toilet plumes, we’re not just talking about large water droplets that splatter when a toilet is flushed. Even smaller droplets can form and be spread into the surrounding air, potentially carrying bacteria like E. coli or a virus (e.g., norovirus) if an infected person has previously used said toilet. Pathogens can linger in the bowl even after repeated flushes, just waiting for their chance to launch into the air and spread disease. That’s because larger droplets, in particular, can settle on surfaces before they dry, while smaller ones travel further on natural air currents.

The first experiments examining whether toilet plumes contained contaminated particles were done in the 1950s, and the notion that disease could be spread this way was popularized in a 1975 study. In 2022, physicists and engineers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, managed to visualize toilet plumes of tiny airborne particles ejected from toilets during a flush using a combination of green lasers and cameras. It made for some pretty vivid video footage:

Colorado researchers managed to visualize toilet plumes in 2022 using green lasers and strategically placed cameras.

“If it’s something you can’t see, it’s easy to represent it doesn’t exist,” study co-author John Grimaldi said at the time. They found that the ejected airborne particles could travel up to 6.6 feet per second, reaching heights of 4.9 feet above the toilet within 8 seconds. And if those particles were smaller (less than 5 microns), they could hang around in that air for over a minute.

More relevant to this latest paper, it’s been suggested that closing the lid before flushing could substantially reduce the airborne spread of contaminants. For example, in 2019, researchers at University College Cork deployed bioaerosol sensors in a shared lavatory for a week to monitor the number and size of contaminant particles. They concluded that flushing with the toilet lid down reduced airborne droplets between 30 and 60 percent. But this scenario also increased the diameter of the droplets and bacteria concentration. Leaving the lid down also means the airborne microdroplets are still detectable 16 minutes after flushing, 11 minutes longer than if one flushed with the lid up.

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