Listeria Monocytogenes Essay examples

The Maple leaf foods listeria outbreak resulted 22 deaths and a widespread recall of luncheon meat, Sandwiches and deli platters, more than  220 packages of produce and a 20$ million dollar settlement for the company as well as consumer confidence in the produce was jolted. The Outbreak was caused by two meat slicing machine’s that were contaminated with Listeriosis and not cleaned properly.

Schwan’s Sales Enterprise had the largest foodborne illness outbreak in history in Marshall, Minnesota around 1994 (Rubenstein, 1998). Cliff Viessman, a tanker truck operator transported a shipment of raw eggs that may have been infected with salmonella bacteria. The suspected contamination was unknown to Viessman’s employees. A foodborne illness is an infection or irritation of the gastrointestinal that caused by food or beverages that contain harmful bacteria, parasites, viruses, or chemicals. The company truck was parked and pressure washed to eliminate the bacteria. The next assignment was to transport ice cream mix to the Schwan’s plant (Rubenstein, 1998). Schwan’s company heard about the bacteria that may have affected their product and

The review indicated that there were several deficiencies existed at this plant, which contributed to the outbreak. For example, Maple Leaf Foods’ plant was aware that it had occurrences of Listeria in the plant in 2007 and 2008, and tried to correct the problem with sanitation procedures. As a result, the plant’s management thought Listeria was under control. Maple Leaf Foods did not conduct the trend analysis required under its Listeria control policy. Without this analysis, the recurring positive results were not identified. Also, the company did not establish an effective escalation process for the repeated occurrence of the bacteria. Furthermore, as a response to a market opportunity, Maple Leaf Foods produced large quantity of its deli meat products, targeted specifically to institutions such as hospitals and long-term care facilities serving high risk individuals, using a low-sodium recipe that increased the potential for Listeria to grow3. However, Maple Leaf Foods did not make corresponding adjustments or improvements to enhance its food safety procedures to reflect the higher risk identified in this special kind of deli products. Apparently, in this issue, Maple Leaf Foods was an active agent; it purposely reduced the sodium to cater

In the case of the Salmonella gastroenteritis outbreak after a reception, the origin of the illness comes down to the potato salad served at this event, however, the investigators are not certain of the mechanism of contamination. Whether the service worker (infected) might have unknowingly contaminated the food item or whether the food service worker also was infected through the same source as the case-patients remains unclear.2 Because the mechanism is unclear, it’s hard to identify if any of the ingredients in the potato salad were the culprit. In many cases, however, investigators are able to identify the mechanism for contamination.

A) Emerging Infectious Diseases reported an example of a real life outbreak of community-acquired foodborne illness caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in January 2002, from the Tennessee Department of Health, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. A family purchased a dinner of shredded barbeque pork and coleslaw from a convenience and delicatessen market. The pork was reheated in the home microwave, and three adults ate the food after it was bought. Three to four hours after eating the meal, the three adults who had not eaten another common meal together in the preceding week had nausea, vomiting, and stomach cramps. The two children who did not eat the food did not become sick. Two of the three adults were hospitalized for evaluation, and then they were treated and released.

In August-October 2011 there was an outbreak of the Bacteria Listeriosis coming from a Colorado farm called Jensen Farm. Jensen farm held a press conference on September fourteenth and voluntarily recalled their cantaloupe. The cost associated with just one food borne illness shocked me. The symptoms of this outbreak were the same for many of the victims which included: fever, muscle aches, and diarrhea. The causalities were extremely high in this outbreak. There were 146 total infections, 30 deaths, and even a miscarriage roaming over 28 states in total. Most People who became ill were over sixty and fifty-eight percent were female (Multistate Outbreak of Listeriosis Linked to Whole Cantaloupes from Jensen Farms,

The book Poisoned by Jeff Benedict was not only enjoyable but also has a lot of information concerned food safety. The author writes chronologically a story about the Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak that took place in Washington State on 1993 because that event change the way American eating habits. The outbreak was confirmed by Dr, Phil Tarr after he was receiving many patient who were children under 10 years old, and had the same symptoms. The number of patient and the brutality of the symptoms leaded to Dr, Tarr to contact an old friend that they used to work together particularly in E.coli. Tarr's friend was John Kobayashi who has the high position in the Department on the public heath Washington State Public Department (Benedict, 2011).

The bacterium is largely spread in nature and be present in soil, water and contaminated foods. Animals and fresh produce are prone to contamination in foul environment. How this affected Enterprise Food, is the factory workers were in the presence of the bacterium while they were producing the perishable, and from the above research listeriosis shows that it has the ability to affect the working environment through oxygen ‘inhaling’, and through quality checks when the quality in spectator test the product as for quality protocol by tasting the perishable meat. Infection of the bacterium can cause in mild to severe febrile gastroenteritis and in pregnant women, the bacterium can cause pregnancy loss. (National institute for communicable

• Food Infection: pathogens grow inside the intestine of a person, eating food contaminated by these pathogens.

In order to understand foodborne illnesses There are four types of pathogens microorganisms that they can contaminate the food and cause illness, than there is different conditions affect the growth of this foodborne harmful microorganisms we also need to know and understand the difference the different types of food that support the growth of pathogens we need to be able to distinguish between foodborne infections intoxications and toxin mediated infections than there is bacteria viruses parasites and fungi and there are different types of biological chemical and physical contaminants and we have to learn about food allergies. To really understand foodborne illness first we need to learn about microorganisms that cause them and

Foodborne illness, or food poisoning, happens everyday in the U.S. and it is estimated that 48 million people are affected by it every year. Of these 48 million, 128,000 end up in the hospital and 3000 of them die from foodborne pathogens (Tucker, 2014). Foodborne illnesses can be caused by biological, chemical, or physical contaminants. The biological contaminants consist of bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. Chemical contaminants are pesticides, cleaning supplies, and toxic chemicals. Physical contaminations are dirt, glass, wood, splinters, stones, hair, jewelry, and metal shavings (Tucker, 2014). Salmonella, a bacterium, has been the most common reported cause of food poisoning. Salmonella is most commonly exposed to humans through animal feces and it is usually from animals that give us beef, poultry, and dairy products. People who do not wash their hands after being around animals can also transmit salmonella into our food. The symptoms of Salmonella are abdominal cramps, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and fever (Tucker, 2014). The symptoms will usually resolve on their own in healthy people but may become life threatening in those with compromised immune systems. In order to prevent Salmonellosis, raw eggs should be avoided, as well as undercooked meat, shellfish, and unpasteurized milk and juice (Tucker, 2014). It is also important to always practice hand hygiene before handling any uncooked food products. Escherichia Coli, otherwise known as E. coli, is

After the Civil War, industrialization kicked off (an after-effect of the Market Revolution). But rather than attempt to control it, the government bowed out instead, claiming itself laissez-faire under Adam Smith’s capitalism ideas, and letting the industrial chips fall where they may. However, it appears the government couldn’t let the “invisible hand” decide the fate of the U.S. market, so they began to intervene in business affairs despite their original pledge not to. The government assisted a great deal in the rise of corporate capitalism (business economy run by corporations and monopolies such as the Standard Oil Company and the U.S. Steel Company) through its laissez-faire policies, railroad involvement, and corruption.

Food samples used in this experiment is Nasi Lemak. Total viable count of the sample is 5.4×104 cfu/g, presumptive E. coli is 7.2×102 cfu/g while presumptive S. aureus is 5.5×103 cfu/g. Based on microbiological guidelines for food, range of acceptable level of viable count is 103 to 105 (Chua et al., 2014). This shows that the food is still safe to be consumed. Acceptable range of microbiological level of E. coli is 102 while marginal range of microbiological level of S. aureus is 102-103 (FSANZ, 2001).

Common illnesses that can occur are salmonella and trichinosis poisoning resulting from improper handling of chicken, eggs or pork (Jardin, 2009, para.2). Diseases such as: campylobacteriosis, cholera, and listeriosis also make the list of illnesses (Jardin, 2009, para.1). These diseases are the versions of food poisoning, which can be life-threatening. According to the World of Health article published in 2007,

This report is authorized by Ms Sandra Wong, the owner and managing director of Hipster Sdn Bhd (Kuching’s fashion Clothing and Accessories company).