andrew schneider investigates

March 18, 2009

It’s the law. Country of origin must be labeled on many food items but thousands still slip through the government net

Filed under: FDA, Food Safety, Seafood, USDA — Andrew Schneider @ 09:29

There was a time when imported food was coveted, a way to impress your neighbors, friends and colleagues with prosciutto from Italy, sea conchs from Chile, stinky cheese from Denmark, eggplant preserve from Greece, snails from France, and the list went on. 

However, now that a good hunk of our food comes from abroad two things have happened. First, the novelty has worn off, with even the most exotic products available at the corner store. But second, some of that intriguing “foreign” food has been bad. Not a lot, but enough to get the attention of shoppers. 

Many consumers don’t even want to buy rice from China, but we can’t blame all the lack of attention to food safety to overseas suppliers. salmon-with-cool-tags

It has been months since the first reports of salmonella poisoning from Georgia peanuts surfaced, and again today I received emails from the FDA warning me of nine additional peanut products to avoid. 

As of Monday, and at long last, the USDA has given food shoppers what they think they want – a country of origin or COOL label on many grocery store products.

The new detailed label is supposed to be affixed to farm-raised shellfish and fish, most poultry, beef, lamb, pork and goat, and almost all perishable fruits, vegetables and nuts.

But as I’ve warned before, the program that will cost between $60 million and $100 million a year to implement, has enormous loopholes which exclude mandatory labeling on thousands of processed foods and mixtures.

For example, mix carrots from Chile with peas from Honduras, and the country of origin need not be revealed. The same applies to chicken or meat that’s breaded, marinated or processed in any way.

The labeling is designed to give consumers more information on where the food they buy comes from, but the government stresses that the new labels do not ensure the quality or safety of the food to which they’re attached. 

However, if the FDA if recalling tomatoes from Mexico or peppers from Guatemala or lettuce from Brazil, the labels would give careful shoppers more information on what to avoid.

Country-of-origin labeling is not new.

Karen Nachay of Food Technology magazine says that almost 80 years ago, the Tariff Act of 1930 required that all manufactured goods imported into the United States list the country of origin.

Getting this labeling law implemented is a complex and sometimes ugly story but Karen’s article does an outstanding job of giving the reader a detailed look at how COOL was stalled, delayed and finally passed, and what it really means to both consumers and the food industry. Here is the link to her fine story. I just wish I had it years ago when I was stumbling to understand the issue.

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March 15, 2009

Popcorn flavoring victims dies as jury awards $7.5 million, but government does little to prevent future diacetyl exposure

Filed under: Diacetyl and flavoring agents, Environmental health issues, Food Safety, Government & corporate wrong-doing, Worker Safety — Andrew Schneider @ 09:32

Ronald Kuiper died last week, just one day before a jury decided that a maker of chemical butter flavoring owed him $7.5 million for destruction of his lungs.

Kuiper was 64 when I interviewed him five years ago, just before doctors confirmed what he told me he already knew – that he had bronchiolitis obliterans, which is also called “popcorn lung.”

Obviously, the jury agreed that it was diacetyl that was killing him when he testified briefly before them.

popcorn0121In the 90s, inhalation of this synthetic butter flavoring had been blamed for destroying the lungs of hundreds of workers in microwave popcorn plants throughout the Midwest. Included was American Pop Corn, the plant in Sioux City, Iowa, where Kuiper worked as a butter-flavor mixer.
The verdict, which took jurors six days to reach, was against Givaudan Flavors Corp. of Cincinnati. Earlier, Kuiper and his wife had also sued three other mega-flavor makers – International Flavors & Fragrances, Inc., Flavors of North America, Inc. and Sensient Flavors, Inc.

I’m told they paid the Kuipers without going to trial.
Kuiper contacted me after he read articles I’d written in Baltimore for The Sun on sick workers I’d found in flavoring, food processing and other plants across the country where diacetyl is used.

The illness was in its early stages when Kuiper and I spoke, but he was already having respiratory problems and paused often to catch his breath.  Even back then he said it felt like he was suffocating, breathing through a plastic bag.
He told me he was glad I’d reported on what diacetyl was doing to other innocent workers but that he couldn’t understand why the government – OSHA and the Food and Drug Administration – hadn’t tested the safety of the chemical flavoring, which is used worldwide.
There was a minor media frenzy after reports that consumers had contracted bronchiolitis obliterans from inhaling fumes from microwave popcorn they prepared at home – first, on one man and then another who allegedly had the irreversible lung disease.
I’m told a third case is about to go public and that two more consumers, one on each coast, are undergoing medical screening for the same symptoms. All told their physicians that they ate at least four to eight bags of popcorn a day.
America is the world’s largest producer of microwave popcorn, and most of the manufacturers say they have removed the diacetyl from the products. But that’s not enough for unions representing food service workers and cooks. They, along with dozens of scientists, have asked OSHA for emergency safeguards and exposure limits. Congress ordered protective action from OSHA.

Little has happened.
Kuiper died before getting his wish. Neither OSHA nor the FDA have tested the safety of the flavoring. And neither agency restricts or monitors its use even though food scientists estimate that today more than 14,000 individual products use diacetyl for butter flavor.
Kuiper’s lawyer, Kenneth McClain, has settled scores of suits for other popcorn workers for verdicts as high as $20 million.  McClain told the Des Moines Register that more than 300 other diacetyl cases are pending nationwide.
Public health specialists believe if the government fails to control the use of diacetyl, lawyers will be busy for years to come because lives have been destroyed or ended.

For more details, check out the public health wizards gathered around the pump handle at http://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/popcorndiacetyl/

For update, twitter asinvestigates.

February 19, 2009

Toxic crusader still scorned by small town politicians

Filed under: EPA, Environmental health issues, Food Safety, Government & corporate wrong-doing, Pesticides, Worker Safety — Andrew Schneider @ 18:13

If there were a poster child for the overused saying that “no good deeds go unpunished,” it would be Patty Martin.

Chuck Allen, a reporter for the Quincy Valley Post Register, wrote a story today about the Quincy City Council unanimously tdefeating the appointment of former mayor Martin as the city recreation director.

You’ve got to read Allen’s story to see why this is so absurd.

Regrading the vote, Martin told the reporter that, “I’m sorry I’m such a threat. It wasn’t about whether or not I could do the job. It’s about making sure a person who stood up to do the right thing and against something that was illegal doesn’t have a voice.”

It was a decade ago that Martin, then the mayor of Quincy, Washington, a 2-square-mile town about 160 miles east of Seattle, took on the agri-chemical industry.
She was worried about the harm to consumers and farm workers that might come from the very common practice of using industrial waste as fertilizer on the potatoes, apples, wheat, corn and vegetables produced on the hundreds of thousand of irrigated areas in the Quincy Valley.

She and some concerned farmers found that there was illegal dumping of hazardous waste, which, because of bizarre EPA rules magically became “safe” when it was called fertilizer.

Many local farmers hated her. Major agricultural chemical companies expressed evil wishes about her well being. Her enemies included global corporations feared her crusade would somehow get the attention of the outside world and USDA and EPA might crack down on the dangerous practice.

Restraint and subtly were unheard of in the assaults on her and her farmers.

Duff Wilson, one of the nation’s best investigative reporters, worked for the Seattle Times when he learned of the mayor’s battle. For months he chased the story and did a fantastic job of documenting the toxic dangers and corporate and government shenanigans surrounding this public health atrocity. He was a finalist for Pulitzer Prize for public servive for his work.

Wilson’s 2001 book, Fateful Harvest, gets to the heart of an environmental crime that continues today, albeit somewhat better hidden.

I covered hearings and public meetings where policy makers in EPA headquarters used Martin’s findings and Wilson’s work to try to halt the toxic waste shell game. However, the Bush White House, buckled to the agri-chemcial lobby and ordered the OMB to stifle the new regulations.

Today, Wilson, who is doing his reporting magic for the New York Times, told me that Martin “helped expose and reform” the dangerous practice.

“As a result of her calling this to public attention when she was mayor of Quincy eight years ago, many states reformed their fertilizer rules and set limits on these so-called toxic tag-alongs in fertilizer,” Wilson wrote me in an email.

“It’s sad for me to see that (she) continues to suffer retaliation in her hometown for trying to make fertilizer, farming and food safer.”

For more of the story on what Martin did and Wilson wrote, check out this link and ask how much of this is still happening.

February 11, 2009

A look at a real victim of the peanut butter poisoning

Filed under: FDA, Food Safety, Food poisoning, Government & corporate wrong-doing, Public health legislation, Risks to children — Andrew Schneider @ 09:48

Members of Congress who repeatedly huff and puff over the treacherous deficiencies in the government’s protection of the nation’s food supply came face-to-face today with a 3-year-old boy who nearly died because his favorite snack was filled with salmonella-tainted peanut butter.

When Rep. Henry Waxman gaveled his House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing into action this morning, the parents of Jacob Hurley were there to describe how they came close to losing their son last month. And according to Waxman, it happened because of the apparent greed of the owners of Peanut Corp. of America and the Food and Drug Administration’s inadequate food-inspection system.

Waxman opened the hearing to a packed room by waving documents that he said showed that the Peanut Corp. of America was “a company that was more concerned with its bottom line than the safety of its customers.”

The California Democrat said the company was notified last September by a private lab that its products had tested positive for salmonella.

“In response, the president of the company, Stewart Parnell, sent an e-mail complaining that positive salmonella tests were ‘costing us huge $$$$$ and causing obviously a huge lapse in time from the time we pick up peanuts until the time we can invoice,’ ” Waxman saidf.

As the Seattle P-I reported today in its story on the “Peanut scandal’s weakest victims,” peanut and peanut products from the company, tainted with salmonella, have made at least 604 people sick, sent 187 to the hospital and killed eight.

Three-year-old Jacob was one of those sickened. His father, Peter, a veteran Portland, Ore., police officer, tells the committee that not only was his child brought down by the salmonella, but, because of FDA’s failure to order a mandatory recall of all products using the dangerous peanut butter from the Georgia plant, Jacob also continued to be fed his favorite snack crackers that contained the salmonella bacteria.

Seattle lawyer William Marler was asked to submit written comments to the committee. He had been involved in the aftermath of the 2007 poisoning of 400 people by Conagra’s Peter Pan Peanut Butter, which carried the same strain of salmonella as found in the Peanut Corp. of America products.

Marler told the committee what he had been urging for years: that the three main federal agencies responsible for food safety — the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service and the inspection arm of the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — be merged and adequately funded.

“The present system is trifurcated, which leads to turf wars and split responsibilities. We need one independent agency that deals with food-borne pathogens,” he wrote.

February 9, 2009

Flavoring maker fights on to keep safety inspectors out

Filed under: Diacetyl and flavoring agents, FDA, Food Safety, Food additives, GRAS, Government & corporate wrong-doing, Public health legislation — Andrew Schneider @ 16:38

At times like these I think I should change the name of my blog to “Tales of the Absurd.”

This example centers on a year-long court battle between an Indianapolis flavor manufacturer and the government’s top occupational safety investigators. The fact that the company has gone to federal court to keep the federal health and safety wizards from protecting the workers from a sometimes lethal chemical strikes many as well beyond absurd.

At the heart of the dispute is the health of 200 workers at Sensient Flavors International and a chemical mixture that they use called diacetyl, which has killed several and sickened hundreds of workers in plants across the country that use the synthetic butter flavoring. That would include thousands of candies, cookies, baked goods, prepared food products and cooking oils and sprays.

On the other side of the courtroom are the feds – physicians, toxicologists and industrial hygienists – who work for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Their battle to control exposure to his chemical concoction soared into prominence in August —-2000 when the NIOSH team was called to investigate an outbreak of bronchiolitis obliterans in former workers of Missouri microwave-popcorn plant.

Within months, they found the same irreversible lung disease in other workers at popcorn plants in the Midwest.

The fight with Sensient began almost a year ago when the local Teamsters union representing the plant’s workers asked NIOSH, the worker-safety research arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to inspect the plant, which it did.

But when I interviewed Teamster health and safety officials last year they said the company had altered the production process while the feds were inspecting and taking air samples and that the investigators failed to get an accurate idea of the conditions.

NIOSH told Sensient that it wanted to return and take more samples and interview additional workers because “pulmonary abnormalities” uncovered during its first inspection demanded a “second and more extensive examination,” an agency official told me.

The- Indianapolis Business Journal said that Sensient acknowledges federal law gave NIOSH authority to conduct the first inspection. But it says no new information had emerged that would give the feds the right to go through the “highly invasive process” again.

“NIOSH is attempting to use Sensient’s facility as its own personal laboratory,” the company complained in a federal lawsuit filed in July. The company demanded in the lawsuit that the second inspection be blocked.

Dr. David Egilman, a occupational medicine specialist and Clinical Associated Professor at Brown University, who has been examining patients harmed by diacetyl since the first popcorn cases, calls Sensient’s position absurd and dangerous.

“If any one is experimenting, it is Sensient and the guinea pigs are their workers. It is just outrageous that this company that has never tested the toxicity of any of the chemicals it puts in our food has gall to block government researchers efforts to determine if they stuff they are adding to food will kill or injure us,” said Egilman, who has testified on behalf of the injured workers in many of the lawsuits they brought against flavoring companies.

The legal game playing continues in federal court with both sides battling whether discovery requests are too broad or too narrow and other courtroom tactics.
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Meanwhile, the workers continue to mix the diacetyl into flavorings that are being shipped to scores of food-processing plants where other workers will be exposed to the faux butter flavoring.

In related news, after Senate and House hearings, union demands and insistent bellowing of safety activists, OSHA has taken the first step in actually doing something to prevent workers from having diacetyl destroy their lungs.

The agency has asked for public comments on issues related to occupational exposure to diacetyl and food flavorings containing diacetyl. Someone has already submitted the P-I story from 2007 of diacetyl exposure to professional and home cooks from butters, sprays and oils containing the food flavoring. This is a link to the PI’s story on diacetyl.

There is no indication that the Food and Drug Administration, which approved the use of diacetyl years ago without any agency testing, will order any testing of the food flavoring.

February 3, 2009

Medical helicopters and bad peanut butter — we know better.

Filed under: FDA, Food Safety, Food poisoning, Government & corporate wrong-doing, Public health legislation, Random observations — Andrew Schneider @ 21:18

I’m back in Washington this week, the one on the Potomac. It didn’t take me long to remember that the person staffing the Oval Office may not have a lot to say about how the government really functions.

The absurdities of how agencies do their jobs continues to stun the new president’s team, especially when it comes to how the Food and Drug Administration has, and is, handling the salmonella-contaminated peanut butter products.

Congressional offices were fielding hundreds of calls and e-mails from constituents who were angered or incredulous when they learned that the FDA wasn’t permitted to order the enormous recall of thousands of products that used peanut butter or paste from the Peanut Corp. of America without permission of the company.

Let’s try this again. The federal food safety authorities who are trying to crack down on the tainted products that have sickened 550 people and killed at least eight can’t just shut the villain down?

No. Not even when the FDA can show that PCA has knowingly sold salmonella-contaminated peanut butter 12 times in the past two years.

Further, the company even gets to pick and choose the wording that FDA uses in the recall.

“It’s has been this way for years. The company’s feelings come before the health of the public,” an investigator who fought the battle in the field and in headquarters for years told me Tuesday.

“It’s stupid and painful to have to stand there with our federal hat in our hands waiting for the company’s approval of the language we use and whether or not we even send the damn recall out.”

Yesterday, both Congress and President Barack Obama said there would be a top-to-bottom review of FDA operations.

Meanwhile, 11 miles away from the FDA, the National Transportation Safety Board was working its way through four days of hearings on why med-evac helicopters were falling out of the sky across the country.

Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the safety board, said many of the nine fatal accidents could have been prevented and several of the almost three dozen fatalities could have been eliminated.

It looks as if we’re in another cycle of crashes, deaths, recommendations from the NTSB and failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to actually do anything.

The board says it will listen to more than 40 witnesses but has no plans to make recommendations.

“Why bother,” one accident investigator told me. “No matter what we say needs to be done, the FAA will again bow to the air ambulance industry and demand nothing.”

I have a troublesome perspective on why this NTSB expert is correct.

Twenty-three years ago, while at the Pittsburgh Press, two photographers and I investigated dozens of med-evac crashes and found many similar causes. Included were that hospitals that owned or leased the helicopters demanded or pressured air crews to fly in severe weather or greatly limited visibility, all to get the patients and their wallets back to their facilities. We were able to document that flight nurses, physicians, paramedics and patients were often killed when they struck their heads on sharp-edged emergency equipment attached to the ceilings and walls, or their spines and necks were broken when the flimsy seats collapsed. Meanwhile, up forward, pilots in helmets and strapped into crash-attenuating seats often survived the impact.

The NTSB confirmed many of our findings and issued a long list of recommendations for the FAA to make into laws and enforce.

Few, if any improvements were made, so again, hearings are being held on why livesavers were dying.

You think about it.

January 28, 2009

Prison for peanut execs who knew salmonella was present?

Filed under: FDA, Food Safety, Food poisoning, Risks to children — Andrew Schneider @ 16:53
The Chinese kill their food poisoners. What about the U.S. peanut butter execs who know salmonella was present 12 times.

Accidents happen, but the FDA has determined that the producer of the peanut butter that has sickened more than 500 people, hospitalized 127 and killed eight has a history of knowingly selling food contaminated with salmonella.

The FDA has identified approximately12 instances in the past two years when Peanut Corporation of America, in its own internal testing, identified some type of salmonella in the food and eventually released peanut butter for sale, said Michael Rogers, who heads FDA’s Division of Field Investigations in the Office of Regulatory Affairs.

Several of you have already reminded me that just last week, a Chinese court ordered the death of two men and a life sentence for a dairy executive for their roles in knowingly producing and selling milk poisoned with melamine. The tainted milk has killed at least six children and made almost 300,000 sick. The presence of the melamine, a chemical used in plastics, forced a world-wide recall of dairy and other products.

Fortunately, the numbers of unfortunates sickened in the U.S. was far, far lower, but, according to FDA’s Robert Tauxe, half of those brought down by the bad peanut butter are children.

Nevertheless, I can’t see the government demanding the death penalty for the gang at the Georgia peanut plant, but if they really knew it had salmonella and still sold it, that sounds criminal to me.

Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in Washington, says that if further investigation show the action of the peanut executives violated the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act …then that is technically a 
violation of the law.

FDA’s regulations have “the force of law,” Sundlof says. “Whether or not there was any criminal activity involved is a different issue. We’re looking.”

Meanwhile, the American Peanut Council tossed its Georgia member to the wolves, saying the trade group was shocked and dismayed at the findings that the company “knowingly released a product with potential salmonella contamination into the food supply.”

“The findings of the FDA report can only be seen as a clear and unconscionable action of one irresponsible manufacturer…,” Patrick Archer, peanut council present, said in a statement.

January 27, 2009

A 1,600 calorie dessert? Have two

Filed under: Food - good, bad, weird, Food Safety, Risks to children — Andrew Schneider @ 14:02

<![CDATA[Sometimes frivolous topics can be serious.

Let's talk about the "Food Porn Alert" issued today which either warns us off or entices us toward a Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie offered by Chili's restaurant chain.

The "pie" is made from chocolate chips, walnuts and coconut with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge and caramel toppings piled on top.

The alert was issued today by Nutrition Action, a newsletter put out by the nonprofit nutrition watchdog, the Center for Science in the Public Interest

That dessert provides 1,590 calories, 37 grams of saturated fat (almost two days' worth), and 910 milligrams of sodium, about half of what you should have in a day.

The health group says the dessert is equivalent to 1 full racks of Chili's Original Baby Back Ribs.

CSPI's senior nutritionist Jayne Hurley say this kind of food porn helps explain America's epidemic of obesity, heart disease and diabetes. It also makes a compelling case why calorie counts belong right on the menus, not just buried on corporate web sites."

Other recent "Food Porn" stars recognized by the group include Starbucks' Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate, Sara Lee Cheesecake Bites, and DiGiorno's Ultimate Focaccia Pizza.

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January 26, 2009

Widespread concealment of tainted imported honey

Filed under: Food - good, bad, weird, Food Safety, Food poisoning, Risks to children — Andrew Schneider @ 16:40

<![CDATA[Yes, I wrote yet another story on honey laundering.

Given the multiple crises we face, the fact that money-grubbing business people here and in China are shipping and importing honey that's erroneously labeled and may contain illegal antibiotics probably isn't at the top of your must-do list for our new president.

I agree.

The banned drugs that the Chinese added to kill the epidemic that was decimating millions of their bee hives will only harm a very small number of the people who eat it. But many of the phone calls and e-mail I received today in reaction to the story, said it's important if your child or loved one is among that small number who are sensitive to the animal medication.

In today's story, I wrote about the National Honey Board and Sue Bee Associates, the nation's largest honey seller, having knowledge of the presence of tainted honey and not seeing the need or value of telling federal health inspectors about it. In the case of the quasi-governmental honey board, its CEO was told about contaminated honey on grocery shelves and he said he didn't notify health authorities because it wasn't his job.

After today's phone calls, I can add three companies who allegedly shipped bad honey back to their supplier with the knowledge that the loads would be resold to other U.S. honey packers.

Two of the people who supplied this information say that they felt that nothing would happen unless and until some really bad honey made it though our porous borders and lots of people either got sick or died.

I guess that's why I write about honey and other potential hazards that are low on the government's crisis list.

And to the gaggle of you who ask if I don't have more important public health investigations to chase before the owners close this newspaper down in 40-something days, the answer is yes.

I crank out what I can, and I'll keep doing it until they toss us all out.

For those who care, here's a link to all the honey stories.

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January 23, 2009

Pigs have MRSA but feds can’t say if pork is safe.

Filed under: FDA, Food Safety, Government & corporate wrong-doing, MRSA, USDA — Andrew Schneider @ 17:47

<![CDATA[It's official now. Many of the pigs and the farmers who raise them in Iowa and Illinois have MRSA.

It was just about six months ago that I reported on preliminary research done by Dr. Tara Smith, a significantly dedicated epidemiologist who found that pigs at several different Midwest farms had MRSA, as did many of the farmers raising them.

The reaction to her study and my earlier blog item which broke the news - was enormous. She was swamped with calls and I got hundreds of email from here and abroad. Many came from public health workers mostly government praising the efforts of her' and her team at the University of Iowa's Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Many of those health professionals, especially several connected with FDA, USDA and CDC, were passionate in their anger that the government was not taking the presence of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in our food supply anywhere near seriously enough.


Little porker about to be swabbed for MRSA. Photo T. Smith

Some members of Congress expressed outrage and demanded that the federal health agencies determine whether Smith's findings in pigs also meant that pork in our grocery and butcher shop coolers also carried the sometimes lethal bacteria.

So today, Smith's final study was published on PLoS ONE, an online journal for peer-reviewed scientific and medical research.
It said that Smith and her five students tested 446 pigs and 29 workers from pig farms in Iowa and Illinois and found MRSA in 45 percent of the animals and in 45 percent of the humans caring for them.

So I called some disease detectives and food safety specialists in agencies responsible for ensuring that our food supply is safe. You could almost hear them cringe over the phone. And, no, to the best of their knowledge, neither the FDA, USDA nor CDC had launched systematic testing of the U.S. meat supply for MRSA. One physician said that a study was being done on the MRSA strain (ST398) that Smith had found on the pigs but added, "I don't think it has anything to do with meat."

They did mention that some testing but far from enough - was being done by the academic community and gave me the names of researchers at Louisiana State University and the University of Minnesota. I'll try to chase them down over the weekend.

Next I called staff members of some of the same congressional committees that were so upset and promised action last June when Smith's initial results were released. Two senior people said almost the identical thing "We'll get to it when we get the economy under control." A lawyer on the third committee said she was embarrassed that nothing had happen, but would "contact Dr. Smith soon."

OK. We'll see.

Smith said her group has a number of ongoing projects examining MRSA in food and in rural communities, including examining the presence of MRSA on both conventional and organic farms.

The feds have a large role to play, she says.

"The studies should be expanded nationwide to examine hundreds of farms in Iowa and other swine-farming states and see how common MRSA is on a national level."

But she agrees with many others that a national survey of meat products should be conducted and other animals like beef, poultry, lamb and goat should also be checked out for MRSA.

Smith added that her study just reinforces the importance of vigilance in food handling and cooking procedures.

"It's likely that cooking will kill any MRSA present on the surface of meats, but anyone handling raw meats should be careful about cross-contamination of cooking areas or other food products, and should make sure hands are washed before touching one's face, nose, lips, etc.," the scientists said.

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