Ecoli Outbreak in the UK

So thats why sandwiches disappeared off the shelves earlier this week. Thought it would be something to do with food preparation and cases throughout the country means a wide distribution which all points to preprocessed food. Someone hasn't been washing their hands properly after taking a dump.

cheesefest said:
Amazon selling sandwiches?
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Non-specific image so people don't start saying "OMG <insert supermarket here> is selling sandwiches that kill you! Boycott them now!!!!!!11111one"
 
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Stu999 said:
This is why I don't eat salad:

www.bbc.co.uk

Supermarket sandwiches linked to E. coli outbreak

Retailers are removing at least 56 types of sandwiches, wraps and salad from UK supermarket shelves.
www.bbc.co.uk
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If-you-see-me-eating-a-salad-in-a-restaurant-I-hav
 
Stu999 said:
This is why I don't eat salad:

www.bbc.co.uk

Supermarket sandwiches linked to E. coli outbreak

Retailers are removing at least 56 types of sandwiches, wraps and salad from UK supermarket shelves.
www.bbc.co.uk
Click to expand...

100% You need to be careful with this. Especially cabbages and other leafy high risk foods.

I used to work in processed foods and most leaf products were never washed before being prepped for consumption. Wraps for example the leaf has zero prep or cleaning. Full of bugs and rabbit droppings from suppliers. Same for Coleslaws. Carrots, onions etc all go through some sort of chemical cleaning because they were prepped on site to different cuts but cabbage would go straight through, chopped up and straight into the mix.

If a factory has an outbreak of Listeria or E-Coli you will not know about it for at least a month until the lab samples have been done.

Then during deep clean during the night shift everything is steam and all over so all the spores etc are just all transferred all over the machinery then all that needs to happen is for a swab to be missed or not done correctly and the entire days production is contaminated and sent out.

My rule of thumb is to try and avoid any processed food that hasn't been pre-cooked or requires cooking or even better avoid processed food altogether.
 
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cheesefest said:
How many of the e-coli outbreaks are caused by sandwiches and other things on the recall list? Most of these lines are consumed within 30 mins of purchasing.
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It's no the sandwich itself but how the ingredients are handled. In food processing you have two options. Heat to kill it or chill to keep it dormant as best as you can.

Vegetables especially leafy ones are the hardest because you cannot cook them if they are meant to be eaten raw and chilling them can reduce the quality so are very high risk. Machinery that is used to produce them are constantly deep cleaned using water and chemicals with drains everywhere and as a result these places are prime breeding grounds for things like E-Coli, Listeria etc and can spread like wildfire. Operatives who handle them get it on their hands more often or not by poor hygiene and it gets passed onto the veg.

A pizza for example will have it's base pre cooked so all problems associated with flour based products are killed. Then the raw materials are placed on top and then frozen instantly. Then once it is home you cook it and if there is anything left it is killed by the heat.

With a Sandwich pretty much nothing goes through any sort of process to eliminate pathogens.
 
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