About 50 people become ill from Salmonella after attending Bean Day, an annual fundraising event in Alabama.
A number of issues were identified in the county health department’s inspection report:
- Soaking the beans in a plastic-lined horse trough covered with plywood, with a water hose running water through the trough (the ADPH did not know if or how the trough, which was located at the church, had been used prior to the dinner)
- Handling food without gloves;
- Turning off the heat source for the beans and disconnecting gas lines for burners without monitoring the temperature of the food;
- Transferring the beans in outside cooking pots to a smaller iron pot on wheels to take large quantities of the beans inside the church;
- Using one sterno can per 6-inch-deep chaffing pan to maintain the holding temperature of the beans;
- Re-using chaffing pans and adding new beans to existing beans throughout the serving time. Illness sweeps
While the soaking of the beans in a plastic-line horse trough seems like the worst violation, this may be overstating its true involvement – because one, it was not currently used to water horses but was located there at the church where the fundraiser occurred; and two, that proper cooking would have eliminated the contamination.
FoodWorld 