Listeria on the run

There’s been a listeria outbreak over 3 states due to contaminated foods.

This is getting ridiculous, this is in hospitals.

One place where you would expect food safety standards to be proper.

Listeria comes mostly comes from soil, ground veggies like pumpkin, onions, peanuts, eggplant, lettuce, cauliflower,etc must be not be washed properly.

This is possibly the cause or staff not washing their hands after doing a dump.

www.news.com.au...

Washing of fresh vegetables in hospital is a "requirement" and most do not just "wash", they really really wash. But hospitals do not test their fresh foods for listeria.
by the time the results come back the veggies are already eaten as they do not last very long after purchase.
Testing is done by government entities and that is hit or miss. It is up to the user to wash fresh foods. They tell us this repeatedly.
Here in the US we do have outbreaks. Mainly in resturants and homes. Hospitals seldom get this outbreak. Because they really do wash.
How do I know? I am an RN and after many years of practice in hospitals, hospice centers and even nursing homes here in the US I have never had a patient or even had a hospital I work in have an outbreak of listeria. So hospitals here in the US do wash veggies. Not sure about any where else in the world.
Something has happened in this situation. The Listeria infected veggies must have been very highly contaminated so that when the veggies were washed it simply wasn't enough. The gov needs to find this source and it should be high on their list. Compromised people can die with this

My first thought is pre washed

I don't know if hospitals wash pre washed but I know restaurants buy pre wash so save on labor and chemical cost

I wouldn't trust it but it's all about money and it saves money to buy pre wash

Listeria is a natural bacteria and is present almost everywhere in the environment. It is a problem for people with compromised immune systems whether naturally compromised, maybe twenty percent of people fall into the natural class, or from medications or past medical procedures that suppress the immune system which makes up the other eighty percent.

Very few people actually got very sick or died from Listeria when they decided to start pasteurizing milk. But some of them that did were from very influential families, even one congressman lost a kid to Listeria. That is why they mandated pasteurization of milk. Usually the milk sours before levels of the listeria get bad or gets the telltale taste of listeria in the food or milk. It sort of tastes like barn when it has listeria in it. I know that taste well, I equate it with growing up on a farm and getting meat and milk from farms with my parents. It usually only gives you the runs for a day or two. But if your immune system is messed up, it can cause lots of problems. I should also mention it also gives your poop a specific aroma. just like some other microbes do...just a different aroma.

As long as my immune system stays adequate, I will not worry about that microbe. I do know the flavor of it though, and kind of avoid contaminated produce and meat products with that smell and taste, just eating a minimum amount, I am more concerned about getting the sheets.

I do not know if Listeria has mutated to a worse strain, I have not kept up with that microbe because it has not been a concern to me.

We hear of a few dozen deaths or severe illnesses occasionally as a bad outbreak, but that is just a small percentage of people who ate the contaminated food. Like I said, if your immune system is compromised or you eat food containing lots of the microbe, it can be problematic. Learn the taste of the excretions of the microbe, it is hard to explain...I say it tastes like a barn.

You can get listeria poisoning from your own produce in your garden if it is present in high enough amounts, especially if you use cow manure. Washing the food well usually keeps it from giving a person problems...but you can't wash milk so I think it was a good thing they started pasteurization, but I am not too much of a fan of Ultra-pasteurized milk, it destroys some good properties of the milk and the milk doesn't always get sour when it gets bad, it gets this weird off taste. I know this because I got a couple of cartons of organic valley grassmilk that went weird tasting and they sent me coupons for new milk and sent an e-mail of how this process works. It said that pasteurization does something to the fat so the milk can get sour, but ultra-pasteurization actually breaks down the protein somehow and the milk gets that chemical off taste to it if it gets bad. Our milk must have not been taken care of, it still had almost three weeks to the exp. date and the cartons were swollen somewhat. They also sent some extra coupons for the inconvenience for free products, which we used to try things we had not yet tried in their product line. So if it is ultra-pasteurized, be aware if it gets a chemical taste and is not sour, it is still bad.

a reply to: DavidsHope

I heard this has now become a National outbreak, seems like it is an issue with a supplier probably skimping on proper cleaning and washing.

It has to be a supplier Issue to go national.

Someone isn’t doing the job properly, or cost cutting in these tough times.

I just found this:

www.9news.com.au...