Food Safety Summit Ironically Soured By Contaminated Chicken
The Food Safety Summit suffered from a sad case of irony this year. April’s event, which attracted hundreds of food safety experts to the Baltimore Convention Center, was soured when a majority of its attendees ended up sick.
The culprit was reportedly the exclusive caterer Centerplate’s chicken Marsala, which 157 of those in attendance had eaten. About 216 of the attendees reported symptoms such as diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea, headaches, chills, vomiting and fever within a week following the gathering.
This sounds almost like the most epic episode of Kitchen Nightmares, with Centerplate having failed at one of its more important conferences.
The proper handling of chicken requires that the poultry be kept refrigerated until prepared, and preferably maintained at high temperatures until served. You must also keep different kinds of meat from touching each other before they are prepared. Otherwise you increase the chances of salmonella, which in turn contaminates other foods the chicken comes in contact with. Though salmonella wasn’t stated to be the reason for the widespread illness, the 50 plus difference between the sick and those who ate the dish at the Food Safety Summit seems to strongly indicate it.
Apparently Centerplate had not kept the chicken at the correct temperature, and it had gone bad at the worst possible time. The complaints to the Baltimore health department had not come from officials in charge of it, but from attendees themselves, people from 42 states, as well as Canada, Mauritius and Costa Rica.
The official report of the illness from the event was as follows.
“The frequency of signs and symptoms, duration of illness, and possible incubation period were consistent with outbreaks caused by C. perfringens. In this outbreak, almost all of the cases had diarrhea and only 10 percent reported vomiting, which is typical of outbreaks caused by C. perfringens.”
The investigation used epidemiological, environmental, and laboratory methods to determine the cause of the outbreak from the Food Safety Summit.
Ironic. Hundreds sickened by contaminated chicken at “2014 Food Safety Summit.” Learn more: http://t.co/2NaU0TIHIS pic.twitter.com/oBjSttBT8Z
— Kenny Torrella (@kennytorrella) September 30, 2014
Upon learning of the outbreak of C. perfringens due to the chicken contamination, organization spokesperson Amy Riemer stated that the situation is being looked into thoroughly.
“When we learned that attendees … were ill after attending the 2014 event we fully cooperated with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene regarding this matter and assisted them with their investigation as requested. We have continued to do so in the past six months while the investigation was conducted and the final report was being prepared.”
This is the first time in the event’s 16-year history that food poisoning put a dark sense of irony over the Food Safety Summit. Both the Baltimore Convention Center and its catering company Centerplate are working to ensure this never happens again.
[image via Tweets and Eats]
