Look carefully if you see “Let’s Grow Healthy Together” alfalfa sprouts in your local store. Green Valley Food Corp. of Dallas is recalling 6,723 cases of the sprouts because Salmonella was found in a test sample. These were distributed in Texas. Details are available from the company via the FDA’s website.

Unfortunately, there have been way too many sprouts recalls in the past several years, and illnesses reported. A different manufacturer recalled possibly contaminated sprouts from stores along the East Coast in April. Be careful!

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could somehow go back to the days when people would grind their own meat at home, or maybe at least get it ground to order at a local store? That certainly would avoid gigantic recalls like this latest one, involving 41,000 pounds of commercially processed and packaged by Tyson Fresh Meats Inc., of Dakota City, Nebraska, that federal inspectors suspect may be contaminated by E. coli bacteria.

The wholesale meat was packed in cases of eight 10-pound poly-wrapped cylinders (known as “chubs”) and shipped to institutions and distributors in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

More information is available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and from Tyson.

Last week, this blog was among the first to report on a surprisingly stern warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to a small, artisan coffee roaster in Seattle, Zoka Coffee. The letter described hundreds of “rodent excretia pellets” and other signs of mice or rats in Zoka’s roasting plant, along with other unsanitary conditions. (See http://wineandfoodworld.com/post/10776752923.) 

Now, Zoka Coffee has responded, calling the FDA letter a “mistake” and that the sanitation problems were addressed within days of the April 2011 inspection. The company also says it got a clear report (93 out of 100 points) from Washington state authorities just last month, as well. Zoka executive Jeff Babcock provides a timeline indicating that the extent of the rodent problem was discovered during the FDA inspection on April 15, 2011, that the company voluntarily shut the plant immediately for three days of “top to bottom” sanitation, and state inspectors cleared the plant for continued operations on April 18, 2011.

I give the company credit for sharing the detailed information and inviting customers to drop by the plant so they can see for themselves. I also applaud that they corrected the sanitation problems so quickly — all too often, sanitation violations build up over time. And, I share some of the dismay that the company has that the efforts that they put into corrective action were not reflected in the FDA warning letter.

But I also am left wondering how the problem could have occurred in the first place. The FDA letter cited much more than an anomaly. The combination of widespread pest droppings, apparent urine stains and handling problems likely built up over time. It’s great that Zoka Coffee has corrected the problems, but I hope that Zoka and all other food processors remain more vigilant so that they catch problems before those problems reach consumers like us.

When FDA inspectors visited Zoka Coffee Company’s roastery in April, they found a large number of what inspectors call “REPs” near coffee processing, including on the burlap bags holding raw beans. REP is an abbreviation for “rodent excreta pellets.” During one inspection visit, the FDA observed a live rat, and at another time, “an employee was observed sneezing directly into his bare hand, then touching the inside of a plastic bag in which tea was being emptied into without previously washing their hands.” Read more in the FDA’s Sept. 9 Zoka Coffee FDA Warning Letter.

I will attempt to contact Zoka for their response.

I stopped into Sushi Yu 2 on West 181st Street yesterday for the first time in many months, and for the first time since the restaurant earned an “A” from the New York City Health Department on September 1.

Because I was only getting a quick snack, this isn’t a full review, but I was interested at the staff member’s response when I congratulated her for the “A” rating. She smiled, and when I said they had to work hard to get it, she smiled again and nodded, and I could tell there was considerable relief and accomplishment behind the smile. (The health inspectors found numerous violations on several previous visits over the past year, until the most recent successful inspection that earned the “A.”)

My quick snack (a spicy tuna roll) was good, and I will return for a more complete evaluation soon.

For more on the city’s health inspection system, see my earlier post on the subject.