http://ipvpn.tmcnet.com/news/2008/05/25/3464659.htm
(Wisconsin State Journal, The (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 25--Moments after the daily meat cart delivery arrived, Cindy Koschmann removed a spoon from sterilized wrap and scooped a precise chunk of raw ground beef into a sterile double bag, adding liquid. She then placed it into a machine aptly named the "Stomacher " that pummels the mix into a soupy mess, painting a not-so-attractive picture of what our digestive tracts internally accomplish.
Nearby, Dora Rodgers began high-tech tests on environmental swabs taken by inspectors from two bakeries, a sushi shop and a meat processing plant.
These microbiologists are two of the food detectives who work far from the limelight searching for pathogens, like salmonella, listeria or harmful E. coli, to keep them out of Wisconsin 's food. They are state employees, working in the little-known Bureau of Laboratory Services under the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
Recent reports of contaminated food -- including the largest beef recall in history of 143 million pounds from a California company in February and JSM Meat Holdings in Chicago issuing an 11-state ground beef recall last week that included Wisconsin -- underscore the need for their vigilance. An estimated 76 million cases of food-borne disease occur each year in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While most of these cases are mild, causing symptoms for a day or two, there are an estimated 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths related to food-borne diseases each year.
The state 's food lab is hidden away in a worn-down building at 4702 University Ave. near Hilldale Mall and works closely with state and federal agencies doing regular surveillance and checks on our food.
While most residents don 't even realize it 's there, this lab has also been on the front lines during recent well-publicized E. coli and salmonella outbreaks identifying the potentially deadly contaminants in spinach, ground beef and pot pies.
"The payoff is when we can get some of these implicated foods in here and identify some of the same organisms with the same genetic fingerprints, " said Kathleen Manner, supervisor of the food and dairy lab. "That 's the point at which you 've solved the mystery. "
Obsolete laboratory
With 29 employees and an annual budget of $2.4 million, the lab was built in 1963 in the days of electric typewriters, when DNA analysis was merely a theory, said Steve Sobek, laboratory director of the Bureau of Laboratory Services.
Now, equipment that analyzes DNA of food pathogens or tests 50-biochemical reactions on a board about the size of a credit card, sits on worn black counters over beat-up wooden cabinets near corroded pipes and inadequate ventilation.
"We 've had to cool an area with a $350,000 machine by putting a $10 box fan next to it -- that 's our high-tech solution, " Sobek said.
"The lab is crowded, unsafe and obsolete, yet the safety of our food supply and trust in our products depends on it, " he told the state Building Commission, which last month approved $1.18 million to design a new lab to be shared with the state Laboratory of Hygiene that could open in 2012.
While it 's not the look of a lab you 'd find on a "CSI " television show, much of their detective work is just as technical. When people become ill and a food is the suspected culprit, lab scientists try to isolate the pathogen in their food samples and match the DNA fingerprint of the contaminant in the food to DNA from clinical samples taken from sick patients. The goal is to quickly pinpoint the suspect food.
"The difference between our food detective work and what you see on CSI ' is that we don 't work in the dark and most of our instruments are actually plugged in, " Manner joked. But she 's serious about their results.
This lab was one of the places that identified the potentially deadly bacteria E. coli O157:H7 in spinach in a nationwide 2006 outbreak and matched it to the DNA of the bacteria found in stool samples from people who had become ill.
"We weren 't the first, but we were among the first, " said Manner. "Someone else beat us to it, darn it. But we were the first with the pot pies with salmonella. "
The first, in this October 2007 case, meant identifying and isolating the "causation organism " for the outbreak, matching lines on DNA trees from human stool samples and the pot pies.
"Our role on the food side is to make sure the citizens of the state have healthy products and have confidence that their food is safe, " Sobek said. "We take that very seriously. "
Dangerous illnesses
Dangerous strains of E. coli, like O157:H7, can cause bloody diarrhea and in severe cases lead to kidney failure. Salmonella can also be fatal to infants, the elderly, the infirm and people with weak immune systems.
"Here, we don 't get any do-overs, " said Manner, entering the microbiology lab. "This room is things you 've heard of and may be scared of like E. coli and salmonella. In here, a lot of our work is identifying the presence of contaminants that may cause illness. We 're looking for any level because your body is a nice incubator and any level is considered contamination. "
During routine tests, most results are reported to state inspectors and regulators who look for patterns to prevent problems but rarely take extreme measures such as shutting down a plant or precipitating a recall when a contaminant like salmonella is found in raw meat that will be cooked. Proper cooking should kill the contaminant.
Testing during an outbreak is far more intense.
"In an outbreak situation the cart is in front of the horse, " Manner added. "People have already become sick. We want to determine what food made them sick. So we throw every detection method we have at an outbreak. "
In an outbreak, this lab works closely with epidemiologists at the state Division of Health who interview patients to look for patterns in foods they have eaten and the state Laboratory of Hygiene, which analyzes clinical samples taken from sick patients. As soon as they suspect a common food, the Division of Health starts searching for samples from homes, restaurants or vendors to send to this lab for testing.
One high-profile example was the September 2006 E. coli traced to tainted Dole spinach that resulted in 205 confirmed illnesses and three deaths nationwide. People began to get sick earlier that month and on Sept. 14 the FDA issued an advisory against eating bagged spinach.
That same day, Sept. 14, the food lab began receiving some dark, runny samples of spinach from the homes of positive patients. Using the product codes on the bags and employing DNA fingerprinting they isolated E. coli O157:H7 from two samples.
This outbreak had a particularly tricky twist in Wisconsin because at the same time people were getting sick from spinach, there was an outbreak at a fair in Manitowoc County. But the lab 's tests showed that the DNA from the E. coli that caused the death of a 77-year-old woman from Manitowoc did not match the DNA of pathogens from the fair, rather it matched the DNA of the E. coli that tainted the spinach.
Routine surveillance
"We don 't have staff sitting around waiting for outbreaks to happen, " said lab director Sobek, noting outbreaks only happen about 10 to 15 times a year. Most of their work is routine surveillance of meat, dairy and produce. In 2007 they analyzed 14,477 samples.
This is the official state dairy lab, which means they test each state dairy plant eight times for label accuracy -- they 're the ones that make sure your 1 percent milk really contains just 1 percent fat -- and other legal requirements needed to ship dairy products. And they perform checks similar to the USDA on meat from smaller Wisconsin plants that is not sold across state lines.
Also in the Bureau of Laboratory Services is the agricultural lab, which oversees and deals with contamination of animal feed, fertilizer and groundwater, involving everything from label accuracy to pesticide analysis at an environmental spill.
But even those routine tests, such as the ones Koschmann and Rodgers were performing, can have unexpected results.
The second week in May was "a banner week " for salmonella, as Koschmann put it. Three of the samples of ground beef she analyzed contained salmonella, as did three others that came in several days earlier. She isn 't alarmed because if ground beef is properly cooked, salmonella won 't do any harm.
Over the past year they found 40 salmonella positives. These are reported to state Division of Food Safety and passed along to the state hygiene lab to post the information to a CDC PulseNet national database to see if there is any link to outbreaks.
"That way if people got sick, we could find where it came from, " Manner explained. However if salmonella was identified in a "ready-to-eat " product, an alert would go to whatever state or federal agencies oversee the product or its shipping. It could potentially lead to food being discarded or a recall.
Despite the fact that a majority of the food lab work involves testing swabs from food environments rather than samples of the food itself, a Listeria positive is far less common. Yet Rodgers ' batch has two. One is a non-pathogenic species, of which they 've found 12 in the past year. But one sample is Listeria monocytogenes, a pathogenic form that has only shown up only once this past year. It can cause flu-like systems, effect the nervous system and is most harmful to pregnant women.
This swab was taken from a utensil drying rack at a bakery in a Milwaukee suburb, which they will report back to the state inspector who took the sample. Follow-up actions could include dramatically increased testing, intense cleaning, recall or possibly a temporary shutdown of a plant.
Jim Larson, acting head of the state Division of Food Safety and director of the meat inspection program, said the food lab scientists not only check food, they also "work closely with us on inspection, " to help determine what pathogens his inspectors should look for in their monitoring.
"The benefit, " added Larson, "is that it gives us that overall verification that the products are safe and it can prevent unsafe food from reaching the public. "
(Wisconsin State Journal, The (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 25--Moments after the daily meat cart delivery arrived, Cindy Koschmann removed a spoon from sterilized wrap and scooped a precise chunk of raw ground beef into a sterile double bag, adding liquid. She then placed it into a machine aptly named the "Stomacher " that pummels the mix into a soupy mess, painting a not-so-attractive picture of what our digestive tracts internally accomplish.
Nearby, Dora Rodgers began high-tech tests on environmental swabs taken by inspectors from two bakeries, a sushi shop and a meat processing plant.
These microbiologists are two of the food detectives who work far from the limelight searching for pathogens, like salmonella, listeria or harmful E. coli, to keep them out of Wisconsin 's food. They are state employees, working in the little-known Bureau of Laboratory Services under the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
Recent reports of contaminated food -- including the largest beef recall in history of 143 million pounds from a California company in February and JSM Meat Holdings in Chicago issuing an 11-state ground beef recall last week that included Wisconsin -- underscore the need for their vigilance. An estimated 76 million cases of food-borne disease occur each year in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While most of these cases are mild, causing symptoms for a day or two, there are an estimated 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths related to food-borne diseases each year.
The state 's food lab is hidden away in a worn-down building at 4702 University Ave. near Hilldale Mall and works closely with state and federal agencies doing regular surveillance and checks on our food.
While most residents don 't even realize it 's there, this lab has also been on the front lines during recent well-publicized E. coli and salmonella outbreaks identifying the potentially deadly contaminants in spinach, ground beef and pot pies.
"The payoff is when we can get some of these implicated foods in here and identify some of the same organisms with the same genetic fingerprints, " said Kathleen Manner, supervisor of the food and dairy lab. "That 's the point at which you 've solved the mystery. "
Obsolete laboratory
With 29 employees and an annual budget of $2.4 million, the lab was built in 1963 in the days of electric typewriters, when DNA analysis was merely a theory, said Steve Sobek, laboratory director of the Bureau of Laboratory Services.
Now, equipment that analyzes DNA of food pathogens or tests 50-biochemical reactions on a board about the size of a credit card, sits on worn black counters over beat-up wooden cabinets near corroded pipes and inadequate ventilation.
"We 've had to cool an area with a $350,000 machine by putting a $10 box fan next to it -- that 's our high-tech solution, " Sobek said.
"The lab is crowded, unsafe and obsolete, yet the safety of our food supply and trust in our products depends on it, " he told the state Building Commission, which last month approved $1.18 million to design a new lab to be shared with the state Laboratory of Hygiene that could open in 2012.
While it 's not the look of a lab you 'd find on a "CSI " television show, much of their detective work is just as technical. When people become ill and a food is the suspected culprit, lab scientists try to isolate the pathogen in their food samples and match the DNA fingerprint of the contaminant in the food to DNA from clinical samples taken from sick patients. The goal is to quickly pinpoint the suspect food.
"The difference between our food detective work and what you see on CSI ' is that we don 't work in the dark and most of our instruments are actually plugged in, " Manner joked. But she 's serious about their results.
This lab was one of the places that identified the potentially deadly bacteria E. coli O157:H7 in spinach in a nationwide 2006 outbreak and matched it to the DNA of the bacteria found in stool samples from people who had become ill.
"We weren 't the first, but we were among the first, " said Manner. "Someone else beat us to it, darn it. But we were the first with the pot pies with salmonella. "
The first, in this October 2007 case, meant identifying and isolating the "causation organism " for the outbreak, matching lines on DNA trees from human stool samples and the pot pies.
"Our role on the food side is to make sure the citizens of the state have healthy products and have confidence that their food is safe, " Sobek said. "We take that very seriously. "
Dangerous illnesses
Dangerous strains of E. coli, like O157:H7, can cause bloody diarrhea and in severe cases lead to kidney failure. Salmonella can also be fatal to infants, the elderly, the infirm and people with weak immune systems.
"Here, we don 't get any do-overs, " said Manner, entering the microbiology lab. "This room is things you 've heard of and may be scared of like E. coli and salmonella. In here, a lot of our work is identifying the presence of contaminants that may cause illness. We 're looking for any level because your body is a nice incubator and any level is considered contamination. "
During routine tests, most results are reported to state inspectors and regulators who look for patterns to prevent problems but rarely take extreme measures such as shutting down a plant or precipitating a recall when a contaminant like salmonella is found in raw meat that will be cooked. Proper cooking should kill the contaminant.
Testing during an outbreak is far more intense.
"In an outbreak situation the cart is in front of the horse, " Manner added. "People have already become sick. We want to determine what food made them sick. So we throw every detection method we have at an outbreak. "
In an outbreak, this lab works closely with epidemiologists at the state Division of Health who interview patients to look for patterns in foods they have eaten and the state Laboratory of Hygiene, which analyzes clinical samples taken from sick patients. As soon as they suspect a common food, the Division of Health starts searching for samples from homes, restaurants or vendors to send to this lab for testing.
One high-profile example was the September 2006 E. coli traced to tainted Dole spinach that resulted in 205 confirmed illnesses and three deaths nationwide. People began to get sick earlier that month and on Sept. 14 the FDA issued an advisory against eating bagged spinach.
That same day, Sept. 14, the food lab began receiving some dark, runny samples of spinach from the homes of positive patients. Using the product codes on the bags and employing DNA fingerprinting they isolated E. coli O157:H7 from two samples.
This outbreak had a particularly tricky twist in Wisconsin because at the same time people were getting sick from spinach, there was an outbreak at a fair in Manitowoc County. But the lab 's tests showed that the DNA from the E. coli that caused the death of a 77-year-old woman from Manitowoc did not match the DNA of pathogens from the fair, rather it matched the DNA of the E. coli that tainted the spinach.
Routine surveillance
"We don 't have staff sitting around waiting for outbreaks to happen, " said lab director Sobek, noting outbreaks only happen about 10 to 15 times a year. Most of their work is routine surveillance of meat, dairy and produce. In 2007 they analyzed 14,477 samples.
This is the official state dairy lab, which means they test each state dairy plant eight times for label accuracy -- they 're the ones that make sure your 1 percent milk really contains just 1 percent fat -- and other legal requirements needed to ship dairy products. And they perform checks similar to the USDA on meat from smaller Wisconsin plants that is not sold across state lines.
Also in the Bureau of Laboratory Services is the agricultural lab, which oversees and deals with contamination of animal feed, fertilizer and groundwater, involving everything from label accuracy to pesticide analysis at an environmental spill.
But even those routine tests, such as the ones Koschmann and Rodgers were performing, can have unexpected results.
The second week in May was "a banner week " for salmonella, as Koschmann put it. Three of the samples of ground beef she analyzed contained salmonella, as did three others that came in several days earlier. She isn 't alarmed because if ground beef is properly cooked, salmonella won 't do any harm.
Over the past year they found 40 salmonella positives. These are reported to state Division of Food Safety and passed along to the state hygiene lab to post the information to a CDC PulseNet national database to see if there is any link to outbreaks.
"That way if people got sick, we could find where it came from, " Manner explained. However if salmonella was identified in a "ready-to-eat " product, an alert would go to whatever state or federal agencies oversee the product or its shipping. It could potentially lead to food being discarded or a recall.
Despite the fact that a majority of the food lab work involves testing swabs from food environments rather than samples of the food itself, a Listeria positive is far less common. Yet Rodgers ' batch has two. One is a non-pathogenic species, of which they 've found 12 in the past year. But one sample is Listeria monocytogenes, a pathogenic form that has only shown up only once this past year. It can cause flu-like systems, effect the nervous system and is most harmful to pregnant women.
This swab was taken from a utensil drying rack at a bakery in a Milwaukee suburb, which they will report back to the state inspector who took the sample. Follow-up actions could include dramatically increased testing, intense cleaning, recall or possibly a temporary shutdown of a plant.
Jim Larson, acting head of the state Division of Food Safety and director of the meat inspection program, said the food lab scientists not only check food, they also "work closely with us on inspection, " to help determine what pathogens his inspectors should look for in their monitoring.
"The benefit, " added Larson, "is that it gives us that overall verification that the products are safe and it can prevent unsafe food from reaching the public. "
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