Listeria monocytogenes - are we failing to learn lessons?

I just looked it up.

It's 17 years since the Maple Leaf deaths.

17 years.

And yet we're still reading the same things.

Poor fabrication.

Cleaning not quite what it should be.

Poor hygienic design.

I was in a factory recently and I pointed out an area of fabrication damage.  "Oh we've not prioritised fixing there because we've not had any swabs fail in that area."

I can't go into detail here but there was a reason I could detect why swabs might not be effective in picking up Listeria in that area.

I'm still seeing factories that wait for a swab failure to correct the things they know are wrong.  They're waiting to sort out fabrication, cleaning, condensation etc.  They are waiting till they actually have Listeria in their facility.  Let that sink in.  They're not acting until they have something which will probably become a resident strain.

Boars Head, pasta recalls and more.  And deaths of people who didn't need to die.

More are happening and with whole genome sequencing, even if they've not been linked yet, they might be in the future (even historical cases).

But when are we going to start with accountability on freely available information that "if you don't do this, you WILL have a problem?"  It feels like (in the UK at least) the only people who ever get imprisoned are the little guys, the takeaway owners etc.  In the US you have to be wilfully dishonest to be put in prison.  When will food safety get the same penalties as people safety?  Because it is people safety, the people are just not in front of you when they die.

Profit before people. Full stop

Our jobs are considered "unimportant" in most places, we're here because of a requirement...........I firmly believe, that there wouldn't be anyone doing our work without the requirements

I worked for ML at that time (in a different capacity) we all felt it, deep. When i walked into the office the Monday morning, to an office with 500 people, you could hear a pin drop.  I had not heard the news over the weekend.

My next job was in food safety, I take my work very seriously.   You must have nerves of steel and be able to quote chapter and verse to upper management in this field, but far too often, the people hired are too young, too weak and too "gung ho" to have what it takes to push back.  I'm not afraid to push OR walk away.  And if I walk, I will blow many whistles on my way out the door 

We kind of do the same thing here stateside for people safety. If EU has very harsh penalties for that, you've already got a leg up on us.

We kind of do the same thing here stateside for people safety. If EU has very harsh penalties for that, you've already got a leg up on us.

UK law (not sure about EU) allows Directors to be held personally accountable for health and safety incidents.  It's rare though.  Mostly it comes over as HUGE fines and I do mean huge and massive negative press.  It's changed behaviours even the threat that you could be personally imprisoned.

But that said you could be imprisoned for food safety law but it doesn't happen if you're not a takeaway and even then, very rarely.  What makes it seem even more like a threat that has no teeth to it is that fines, when they are handed out are tiny.  The two are certainly not comparable.  

Who is WE?

Has QA, in general, learned from this, I think so. 

Have business leaders, C-suitemembers etc, learned? Majority no. Willfully not in many circumstances.

Profits 1st. Product out the door, into a warehouse, saleable goods.

Corporate entities are there for profit, and profit is their driving factor. If data shows that 100's of millions can be saved by cutting costs on (sampling, cleaning, etc.) but a failure only costs a few million, it's a business decision. Of course, I'm over-simplifying that a bit. Boars Head, for instance, lost way more $$ just from the damage their recall did to their name...

Corporate entities are there for profit, and profit is their driving factor. If data shows that 100's of millions can be saved by cutting costs on (sampling, cleaning, etc.) but a failure only costs a few million, it's a business decision. Of course, I'm over-simplifying that a bit. Boars Head, for instance, lost way more $$ just from the damage their recall did to their name...

Is there actuaries in the food business?   Just like cars with flaws, do they do the math on numbers of deaths they're willing to deal with before they part with their cash to fix an issue?    I know they do that in the auto industry, and others.

Food causes 3-5000 deaths per year in the US.   Cars cause around 41,000....   Guns cause around 47,000, mostly suicides.  Not that they have anything to do with the others, it's a total false equivalency, but interesting.   Of all these, food should be the easiest to get near zero it would seem to me.  Personally, I don't think it will ever get to zero though.

The odd thing is that with all the technology the world has nowadays, food borne deaths are on the rise instead of falling.   Isn't that weird?  Boar's Head alone probably skews those numbers from 23-24 years though.

I'm lucky enough to work at a small place where food safety is truly job one for ownership.   Is this more so a larger company problem do you guys think?  

Is there actuaries in the food business?   Just like cars with flaws, do they do the math on numbers of deaths they're willing to deal with before they part with their cash to fix an issue?   

I think the statistics don't help us here.  There isn't a straight line between "that floor is damaged, Listeria could then become resident and could spread to food contact areas of your plant through poor cleaning practices."  It's the classic James Reason Swiss Cheese failure model. You can convince yourself as a leader that you have only got one failure mode in place, you have time to fix it, without properly understanding how the Swiss cheese model works. Your fabrication issue is now a permanent hole in that layer.

A leader could assume that all staff follow barrier practices, all staff clean properly. Nobody touches the floor then food contact.

But they don't know.  Those active failures are hugely dangerous and the compensating behaviours extremely hard to police.  You'd have to be watching every minute of every hour. That false sense of security created by the assumption that rules are followed then creates the situation where no leader is thinking "if I don't fix that floor, people will die."  They just don't think they will.

I once had a major issue in a high care area.  The MD told me off for saying we needed to scrap product impacted because I believed people could become ill with Listeria and Listeriosis has a 20% death rate.

"You can't always say people will die!"

Well they could.  And if that was likely to happen in the factory, you'd give a sh**.

What's more is with WGS and the legal changes in the EU, this will start to get detected.  There are potentially cases which had samples taken and retained which are being WGS now.  Perhaps even that ceiling leak...

I think the statistics don't help us here.  There isn't a straight line between "that floor is damaged, Listeria could then become resident and could spread to food contact areas of your plant through poor cleaning practices."  It's the classic James Reason Swiss Cheese failure model. You can convince yourself as a leader that you have only got one failure mode in place, you have time to fix it, without properly understanding how the Swiss cheese model works. Your fabrication issue is now a permanent hole in that layer.

 

A leader could assume that all staff follow barrier practices, all staff clean properly. Nobody touches the floor then food contact.

 

But they don't know.  Those active failures are hugely dangerous and the compensating behaviours extremely hard to police.  You'd have to be watching every minute of every hour. That false sense of security created by the assumption that rules are followed then creates the situation where no leader is thinking "if I don't fix that floor, people will die."  They just don't think they will.

 

I once had a major issue in a high care area.  The MD told me off for saying we needed to scrap product impacted because I believed people could become ill with Listeria and Listeriosis has a 20% death rate.

 

"You can't always say people will die!"

 

Well they could.  And if that was likely to happen in the factory, you'd give a sh**.

 

What's more is with WGS and the legal changes in the EU, this will start to get detected.  There are potentially cases which had samples taken and retained which are being WGS now.  Perhaps even that ceiling leak...

You think food deaths will ever get to zero?   Or perhaps better said, near it?

You think food deaths will ever get to zero?   Or perhaps better said, near it?

Shouldn't it be the aim?  Much like your example, if there's a big construction build and a company planned to have a couple of deaths, we'd now be appalled?

Aim and reality are obviously much different.  And while there are fraudulent or dishonest people in food, which there always will be, then it will happen.  But right now, there are preventable deaths from companies who would (or would have) been considered pretty responsible because they are only interested when the risk becomes a certainty, because before that point, leaders often convince themselves it probably won't happen.  That's for me where the work is to be done.

Yeah, that should be the aim... I'd think for us here, that's the aim now, and for the FDA, etc, they would say the same, though we on this site may disagree with how diligently it's undertaken.  I agree reality is much different.  Unfortunately, I'm a realist.    Perhaps even a fatalist.

Some of the comments in the recent threads on these issues has shown how much the folks on here care about keeping people safe, and it's nice to see.  Not a ton of heart left in the world...