By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World
FDA confirms Listeria outbreak is linked to cantaloupe grown at Colorado farm
Listeria under a microscope
Every week we seem to be getting news about our food supply being tainted with dangerous pathogens that have caused serious illness and death.The Internet is faster than the speed of light in reporting these incidents but unfortunately the public is still in harms way.
Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed an outbreak of food-borne illnesses that killed four people and sickened nearly three dozen others. All of these incidents were traced to cantaloupe produced at a Colorado farm.
I don’t take chances with my food. I am very diligent about when I buy it and who grows it. I trust my produce selection to a hand full of growers at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. I know Mr. Finley, one of the best suppliers and are always assured that the quality and the taste live up to CCOF standards.
Sadly, I have learned that Jensen Farms, a family-owned operation, based in Colorado and has been growing cantaloupes for two decades, was the source of contamination of a strain of Listeria. Here is what we know about this uncommon bacteria. It thrives in cool temperatures.
As we have been witness to climate change, we can’t blame this one on Mother Nature. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the incident marks the first time that a Listeria contamination has been linked to whole cantaloupe and one of the few times it has been linked to produce in general. The culprit for this outbreak is refrigeration. It tends to multiply and can spread quickly in damp buildings, dripping off pipes or ceilings onto food.
Listeria may be linked to a simple act of cutting a melon and spreading the bacteria from the surface into the flesh of the melon and then placing the melon back in the refrigerator which prompts the bacteria to grow more quickly.
What becomes even more troublesome is the rate in which it spreads under refrigeration and where it goes. Retailers and wholesalers are at a loss and can’t guarantee that the public is safe. Even the largest grocery store chains not even in close proximity to the area where the bacteria was first cited can assure customers that their melons are safe. Why? “We know who we sell to and who our customers are, but our customers may resell to another company,” said Amy Philpott, a company spokeswoman.
So the giants in the industry like Safeway and Whole Foods may claim that they are not stocking and selling the cantaloupes that may be infected by Listeria but what about the refrigerated trucks that delivered the produce and may contain the silent bacterial killer? Are they to blame?
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Nancy Chuda is a seasoned broadcast journalist, television writer/producer, talk show host and author. Her career spans over three decades having appeared on both national and cable television.
In 1971 she authored one of America’s first low-calorie cookbooks, How To Gorge George Without Fattening Fanny, published by Hawthorn Books. Appearing as a regular guest on Dinah’s Place, Dinah Shore’s ABC daytime talk show. And later on The Johnny Carson Show, The Today Show with Barbara Walters, Merv Griffin, Phil Donahue, and David Frost. In 1972, Nancy and ABC’s Good Morning America co-produced Michael Krause produced a cable program, The Low- Calorie Gallery, based on her best selling cook book. In 1975, hired by Warner-Amex as part of a creative team, she was responsible for hosting and producing content for Columbus Then and Now, a program, the invention of QUBE, an interactive television system which played a pivotal role in the history of American cable television. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUBE
In 1978 she developed a series for ABC’s Good Morning America based on an article which appeared in Mother Earth News magazine. The Integral Urban House, a case study project and model for a sound urban habitat sponsored by the Farallones Institute in Berkley California was the first example of green architecture ever to be televised.
In 1979, Nancy co-produced and hosted Sunnyside a Los Angeles based public affairs program viewed on the CBS affiliate station KNXT, From 1980-1984, she appeared on KABC’s Eyewitness News as entertainment reporter and film critic.
Her environmental advocacy began when her daughter was diagnosed with cancer. In 1990 she co-produced an Emmy nominated ABC Variety Special, An Evening With Friends For The Environment to benefit Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet one of the first national children’s environmental health advocacy groups in which she served as a volunteer.
Currently, she is the co-founder and President Emeritus of Healthy Child Healthy World, a non-profit organization established to honor the Chuda’s only child, Colette, who died in 1991 at the age of 5 from Wilm’s tumor a nonhereditary childhood cancer. She is also the co-founder of The Colette Chuda Environmental Fund, a donor-advised fund which supports major epidemiological research on children’s health.
Nancy has won numerous awards for her advocacy. In 1996, the California League of Conservation Voters Environmental Leadership Award, The Healthy Schools Heroes Award, presented to both her and her husband James Chuda by California Governor Gray Davis for their legislative efforts in securing The Healthy Schools Act which was signed into law in September, 2000. In 2003, Parent’s Magazine published an article Mom’s On A Mission and awarded Nancy for her environmental leadership for children’s environmental health.
She serves as an associate of the Director’s Council of Public Representatives of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was appointed by President Clinton’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Donna Shalala, to serve as a member of the National Advisory Council for the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) a position she held for four years.
In 2010, along with her husband James she founded LuxEcoLiving.
What about washing the melon thouroughly with soapy water and drying before cutting into? We have all these warnings about bacteria on fruit and salmonella on meat, etc. What can be done to avoid these problems? Doesn’t it help to cook the meat all the way through? The media is always scaring us with these things but never offering any way to counteract or deal with the problem.
The bacteria is apparently _in_ the fruit, not on it, so washing won’t help. Listeria is in soil and can contaminate growing fruit. It’s not from “dripping off pipes” as the author implied, though like any bacteria, Listeria can spread.
And to the author… nowhere does the CDC say it’s because of refrigeration. Please don’t spout nonsense. Listeria can multiply in cooler temperatures, but “refrigerations” is not where this outbreak came from.
And I don’t care if you get your food from your mother, “trusted” sources don’t make any difference. A contaminated melon doesn’t look, smell or taste any different than a normal melon. If Joe Smith in Holly CO was your trusted source, he likely got a local, in-season melon from Jensen farms.
How does the bacteria get INSIDE the melon?? The only possible way is taking an unwashed, dirty melon and cutting into it with a knife and bringing the germs inside the melon with the edge of the knifeblade.
I read a similar story years ago when the CDC was called on a salmonella outbreak and the only food that the infected persons had all eaten was watermelon. Like the cantaloupe, the rind of the watermelon protects the inside from disease. But in the case of the watermelons, they had been sitting in a crate next to a crate of live chickens, with dusty chicken fecal matter floating through the air and coming to rest on the watermelons. When every one of the infected persons cut into their watermelon for a slice, not a single one had washed the outside of the melon before using the knife, and they all became infected with salmonella. Washing and scrubing the rind of a cantaloupe removes the bacteria from the outside.