From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2007-04-03 19:19:27 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] general notes RE: the FOOD RECALL confusions arising
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
IN GENERAL:
The pet treats that were recalled due to *salmonella* are a DIFFERENT
consideration than the *wheat gluten * recalls.
Salmonella is a bacterium, an infection. The wheat gluten contains at
least one contaminant rather than an infection.
----
NOW, IN RELATION TO THE WHEAT GLUTIN:
Most of the affected food is wet or sort-of wet food. Most kibbles have
NO wheat gluten so check the ingredients labels.
The recalled pet foods compromise only very small subset (with the
rest safe)
of the wheat gluten used in the U.S., AND AFFECTS WHEAT GLUTEN FROM
ONLY **ONE** SUPPLIER. So, while there is usually no harm in
stopping using
any foods or treats that contain wheat gluten MOST OF THOSE WILL STILL
BE SAFE *****UNLESS THEY ARE ON A RECALL LIST*****.
If you want to check the ingredients labels for foods that are no
longer in
their original containers go to the websites of places that sell
foods such as
http://www.ferretstore.com/
http://www.ferretdepot.com/index.html
(an extra link in each food description goes to ingredients lists)
or at the websites of the manufacturers
Wheat gluten is NOT the same as wheat and is NOT the same as
gluten from any other source.
Be careful to get your information only from reputable resources. There
ARE rumors going around! Rumors cause panic and confusion!
IGNORE RUMORS!
Use REAL resources like:
http://www.oregonvma.org/news/recalledfood.asp
which is the most timely and best organized one I have found, or the
FDA, AVMA, and ASPCA sites given in posts of just a day or two ago.
----
NOW IN RELATION TO SALMONELLA:
The rates in human grade food are much lower than in the marketed raw
pet foods:
http://cspinet.org/new/200602231.html
> Government Testing of Chicken Shows Dramatic Jump in Salmonella in
> 2005
> Statement of CSPI Food Safety Director Caroline Smith DeWaal
>
> USDA test results announced today show that Salmonella rates in
> chicken increased almost 80 percent since 2000. In 2000, about 9
> percent of chickens tested by USDA were positive for Salmonella but
> the new data show more than 16 percent testing positive.
> Steady increases in Salmonella, including a 2.8 percent jump in
> 2005, mean that more chickens contaminated with Salmonella are
> going home with consumers than at any time since the mid 1990s.
> USDA is belatedly stepping up oversight of the poultry industry to
> try to reverse this trend, but it has stood idly by while
> processors have challenged the agency's authority in court.
> Without legislation from Congress restoring USDA's authority to
> enforce microbial limits in the meat supply, the agency will simply
> flap its wings at Salmonella problems. More than a million people
> in the United States get sick from Salmonella infections each year,
> and more than 500 die. What the agency needs is authority to close
> down any meat or poultry plant that fails to meet performance
> standards.
>
versus
> Another study that cultured 10 raw meat diets based on chicken
> determined
> 8 diets (80%) to be contaminated with Salmonella spp.
>
in
http://www.fda.gov/cvm/Guidance/Guide122.pdf
The full piece is something like 14 pages in total with references so
not a long
read.
Of course, most of the abstracts below do not relate to other
bacteria of
concern with raw diets (examples: infection from E. coli,
actinomycosis, botulism, campylobacteriosis, infection from
mycobacteria) but they do tell a bit more about Salmonella, at least,
and since that is the problem with the recalled treats these should
help the more inquisitive souls here.
Here is a new article on rates of antibiotic resistant forms of
salmonella -- not the rates of the salmonella itself. The reason
this is of concern is because even though Salmonella is not the most
dangerous nor the most prevalent disease bacterium type in raw animal
source produce (like eggs, chicken, etc) it is truly nasty to try to
control when it takes off, and antibiotic resistance makes it far
worse of a problem when that happens.
***Luckily, in ferrets it does not usually take off.***
The reason you don't see those raw things recalled is because they
are expected to be cooked, whereas "serve as is" foods like treats
are not expected to be cooked so those do get recalled.
> Vet Microbiol. 2007 Mar 7; [Epub ahead of print]
> Characterization of multidrug resistant Salmonella recovered from
> diseased animals.
>
> Zhao S, McDermott PF, White DG, Qaiyumi S, Friedman SL, Abbott JW,
> Glenn A, Ayers SL, Post KW, Fales WH, Wilson RB, Reggiardo C,
> Walker RD.
> Office of Research, Center for Veterinary Medicine, U.S. Food &
> Drug Administration, Laurel, MD 20708, United States.
> Three hundred and eighty Salmonella isolates recovered from animal
> diagnostic samples obtained from four state veterinary diagnostic
> laboratories (AZ, NC, MO, and TN) between 2002 and 2003 were tested
> for antimicrobial susceptibilities and further characterized for bla
> (CMY) beta-lactamase genes, class 1 integrons and genetic
> relatedness using PFGE. Forty-seven serovars were identified, the
> most common being S. Typhimurium (26%), S. Heidelberg (9%), S,
> Dublin (8%), S. Newport (8%), S. Derby (7%), and S. Choleraesuis
> (7%). Three hundred and thirteen (82%) isolates were resistant to
> at least one antimicrobial, and 265 (70%) to three or more
> antimicrobials. Resistance was most often observed to tetracycline
> (78%), followed by streptomycin (73%), sulfamethoxazole (68%), and
> ampicillin (54%), and to a lesser extent chloramphenicol (37%),
> kanamycin (37%), amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (20%), and ceftiofur
> (17%). With regards to animal of origin, swine Salmonella isolates
> displayed the highest rate of resistance, being resistant to at
> least one antimicrobial (92%), followed by those recovered from
> turkey (91%), cattle (77%), chicken (68%), and equine (20%).
> Serovars commonly showing multidrug resistance (MDR) to >/=9
> antimicrobials were S. Uganda (100%), S. Agona (79%), and S.
> Newport (62%), compared to S. Heidelberg (11%) and S. Typhimurium
> (7%). Class-1 integrons were detected in 43% of all isolates, and
> were found to contain aadA, aadB, dhfr, cmlA and sat1 gene
> cassettes alone or in various combinations. All ceftiofur resistant
> isolates (n=66) carried the bla(CMY) beta-lactamase gene. A total
> of 230 PFGE patterns were generated among the 380 isolates tested
> using XbaI, indicating extensive genetic diversity across recovered
> Salmonella serovars, however, several MDR clones were repeatedly
> recovered from different diseased animals.
> PMID: 17400409 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Related:
> J Food Prot. 2007 Mar;70(3):582-91.
> Links
> Salmonella Enteritidis in meat, poultry, and pasteurized egg
> products regulated by the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service,
> 1998 through 2003.
>
> White PL, Naugle AL, Jackson CR, Fedorka-Cray PJ, Rose BE,
> Pritchard KM, Levine P, Saini PK, Schroeder CM, Dreyfuss MS, Tan R,
> Holt KG, Harman J, Buchanan S.
> Human Health Sciences Division, Office of Public Health Science,
> Food Safety and Inspection Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture,
> Washington, D.C. 20250-3700, USA.
> The U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) tests for
> Salmonella in meat, poultry, and egg products through three
> regulatory testing programs: the Pathogen Reduction-Hazard Analysis
> and Critical Control Point (PR-HACCP) program, the ready-to-eat
> program for meat and poultry products, and the pasteurized egg
> products program. From 1998 through 2003, 293,938 samples collected
> for these testing programs were analyzed for the presence of
> Salmonella enterica serotypes. Of these samples, 12,699 (4.3%) were
> positive for Salmonella, and 167 (1.3%) of the positive samples
> (0.06% of all samples) contained Salmonella Enteritidis. The
> highest incidence of Salmonella Enteritidis was observed in ground
> chicken PR-HACCP samples (8 of 1,722 samples, 0.46%), and the
> lowest was found in steer-heifer PR-HACCP samples (0 of 12,835
> samples). Salmonella Enteritidis isolates were characterized by
> phage type, pulsed-field gel electrophoretic pattern, and
> antimicrobial susceptibility. Phage typing of 94 Salmonella
> Enteritidis isolates identified PT13 (39 isolates) and PT8 (36
> isolates) as the most common types. One isolate from a ready-to-eat
> ham product was characterized as PT4. Electrophoretic analysis of
> 148 Salmonella Enteritidis isolates indicated genetic diversity
> among the isolates, with 28 unique XbaI electrophoretic patterns
> identified. Of these 148 isolates, 136 (92%) were susceptible to
> each of 16 antimicrobials tested. Two isolates were resistant to
> ampicillin alone, and 10 isolates were resistant to two or more
> antimicrobials. Isolation of Salmonella Enteritidis from FSIS-
> regulated products emphasizes the need for continued consumer
> education on proper food handling and cooking practices and
> continued work to decrease the prevalence of Salmonella in meat,
> poultry, and pasteurized egg products.
> PMID: 17388045 [PubMed - in process]
This looks at how the bacterial counts are done in the first place
for animal source grocery produce, and for which bacteria that
approach perhaps needs modification:
> J Food Prot. 2007 Mar;70(3):739-43.
> Links
> Quantitative effect of refrigerated storage time on the enumeration
> of Campylobacter, Listeria, and Salmonella on artificially
> inoculated raw chicken meat.
>
> Pintar K, Cook A, Pollari F, Ravel A, Lee S, Odumeru JA.
> Laboratory for Foodborne Zoonoses, Public Health Agency of Canada,
> Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 5B2. katarina_pintar@phac-aspc.gc.ca
> Active monitoring of pathogens on retail foods has been recommended
> and implemented in a number of developed countries. Because only a
> portion of retail food is contaminated with pathogens, a cost-
> effective and informative surveillance program at the retail level
> often involves a two-stage approach of initial presence-absence
> analysis and subsequent pathogen enumeration in any positive
> samples. Most-probable-number (MPN) methods are more resource
> intensive and therefore used only for samples considered positive
> by presence-absence methods. Interpretation of the results assumes
> that the initial bacterial count remains relatively stable between
> the initiation of the presence-absence analysis and the enumeration
> analysis. The objective of this study was to quantify the influence
> of 4 degrees C storage for 5 and 8 days on pathogen counts on raw
> chicken. The three pathogens examined were Salmonella Typhimurium,
> Campylobacter jejuni, and Listeria monocytogenes. No significant
> differences were found between treatments for Salmonella and
> Campylobacter. However, significant differences were observed for
> Listeria; counts at day 0 were lower than counts after 5 or 8 days
> of refrigerated storage (the maximum mean difference was less than
> 0.6 log units). These findings suggest that a two-stage approach
> could overestimate the number of Listeria cells on chicken at the
> time of purchase. By using an MPN analysis on the presumptive
> positive samples after 5 days of refrigerated storage, this
> difference will be reduced. These findings support the decision to
> reduce surveillance costs by performing a two-stage analysis for
> Salmonella and Campylobacter on retail chicken. This study provides
> direction for future sampling or surveillance programs that include
> enumeration of Listeria on retail food.
> PMID: 17388068 [PubMed - in process]
> Emerg Infect Dis. 2006 Dec;12(12):1848-52.
> Links
> Salmonella enteritidis in broiler chickens, United States, 2000-2005.
>
> Altekruse SF, Bauer N, Chanlongbutra A, DeSagun R, Naugle A,
> Schlosser W, Umholtz R, White P.
> US Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service,
> Washington, DC 20250, USA. sean.altekruse@fsis.usda.gov
> US Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service
> (FSIS) data on Salmonella enterica serotype Enteritidis in broiler
> chicken carcass rinses collected from 2000 through 2005 showed the
> annual number of isolates increased >4-fold and the proportion of
> establishments with Salmonella Enteritidis-positive rinses
> increased nearly 3-fold (test for trend, p<0.0001). The number of
> states with Salmonella Enteritidis in broiler rinses increased from
> 14 to 24. The predominant phage types (PT) were PT 13 and PT 8, 2
> strains that a recent Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance
> Network (FoodNet) case-control study associated with eating
> chicken. FSIS is directing more sampling resources toward plants
> with marginal Salmonella control to reduce prevalence in products
> including broilers. The policy targets establishments with common
> Salmonella serotypes of human illness, including Salmonella
> Enteritidis. Voluntary interventions should be implemented by
> industry.
Some titles really make a person wonder:
>
> FEEDING OF FERRETS WITH THE RAW MEAT AND LIVER OF CHICKENS
> CHRONICALLY POISONED WITH TOXIC GROUNDNUT MEAL.
The full article is here:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?
artid=1494373&blobtype=pdf
Useful or related:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5525a3.htm?s_cid=mm5525a3_e
is
>Human Salmonellosis Associated with Animal-Derived Pet Treats ---
United States and Canada, 2005
http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/diseases/salmonellosis.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/salmonellosis_g.htm
Hey, it's tree pollen season. I know how badly that affects my
ability to
think and to remember, so better that I check multiple times a share the
resources to catch goofs.
Sukie (not a vet)
Current FHL address:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
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