Thailand halts Australian salad imports

[ThaiKneeTim]

how does one get salmonella from lettuce? usually meat products fish and fowl and icecream but I cant think of any other product perhaps someone will enlighten me.....

Contamination. The outbreak is believed to be linked to a fertiliser sourced from chicken farms & used to grow the lettuce.

Or to be more specific 'cross contamination'.

[alien365]

C'mon OZ, take a leaf from the Thai Book of Procedure and announce you're doing your very and ask for an extension before the ban is implemented.

Throw a defamation lawsuit in there too while you're at it.

[harrry]

how does one get salmonella from lettuce? usually meat products fish and fowl and icecream but I cant think of any other product perhaps someone will enlighten me.....

There was a problem a while ago where it was traced to oranges....it is believed rats in the wharehouse were responsible.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17133801

http://www.ibtimes.com/salmonella-staphylococcus-risk-orange-juice-served-bars-restaurants-study-383630

[TheLobster]

how does one get salmonella from lettuce? usually meat products fish and fowl and icecream but I cant think of any other product perhaps someone will enlighten me.....

Food poisoning is commonly associated with fresh fruit, salad and vegetables (eaten raw). Significant outbreaks in the past few years in the west have been associated with bean sprouts, cucumbers and melons. The main causes are usually poor farm hygiene and/or irrigation with sewage or contaminated water.

[Sydebolle]

Soak veggies imported from China and see what colourful rainbow you can discover in your sink
But then - we're talking of the friendly brethren in the North, don't we

[bazza40]

Fair enough. There is no reason food from anywhere should be regarded as immune from suspension of imports, if there is a health risk.

I've seen wheat and oats harvested in Australia, with application of an anti-fungal agent. The application process was so erratic some produce was probably getting ten times the required dose, while other produce was barely getting any. Australian farms don't necessarily produce high quality foodstuffs.

Chicken S##t on lettuce, eh? I'm wondering if the ambulance chasers are licking their chops at the thought of a class action.

[khun custard]

how does one get salmonella from lettuce? usually meat products fish and fowl and icecream but I cant think of any other product perhaps someone will enlighten me.....

Contamination. The outbreak is believed to be linked to a fertiliser sourced from chicken farms & used to grow the lettuce.

The 3 basic F's of food contamination come to mind....

Fingers, Formites and Feces

I don't think the packaging and the inert gasses used to retain the freshness would trigger a time/ temperature issue

[BSJ]

Billions of dollars in fresh food imports from Australia to Thailand? I find this figure hard to swallow....

That's Cos it's the tip of the Iceberg.

Very good! I am surprised someone else hasn't complimented you on your wit!

[Doc46]

I find this very hard to believe,,,Maybe they should check If The Product Was Handled Correctly,,,After it arrived in Thailand,,,From what I have seen over the years being here ,the handling of Fresh food needs a lot to be improved for it to be up to International Standard .

[attrayant]

Yes, Thailand has a strict import ban on E. coli, salmonella, listeria and norovirus. They're afraid of competition with local vendors of said products.

[bkk6060]

Glad to have my own organic ( hydrophonics) salad 'garden' always fresh and no use of chemicals

Wow. Good for you

That photo is enough greens to fill about 1/2 of my bowl for one sitting. Seems like a lot of work for one meal.

[attrayant]

I was going to be generous and say that looks like it could make three salads if you add some tomatoes and carrots and other things. It must be a labor of love.

Is that arugula? A little bit goes a long way. Sure wish I could find arugula in Thailand.

[theguyfromanotherforum]

Thailand's tossing the salad

[rws85]

Don't know about the rest of you but I ain't to keen on finding live spiders in my salad.

[Dumbastheycome]

Curiously enough there have been other export destinations where Australian veg and fruit products have created similar concerns recently.

Is it possible that an individual or individuals are deliberately making a problem ? Contamination would not be so difficult in the transportation process.

[Thian]

Yes, Thailand has a strict import ban on E. coli, salmonella, listeria and norovirus. They're afraid of competition with local vendors of said products.

On the market around the corner i see chickens cut open and inside out to show all their guts. Thai people buy that because i rarely see farang there.

Next to that is a man chopping up frogs and his neighbour cuts living fish with a machete.

If you come close the splashes end up on your shirt, same goes for the guy who chops pigs into pieces.

I never saw them clean anything or it must be the stinky water which is standing in the clogged drains. That water is so dirty that it looks like concrete, i once stepped in it and got wet untill above my ankle.

If you pay cash on the market the guy gives you change with the same hand he used to cut meat. In supermarkets they touch the meatbag with the same glove they used to grab the meat and hand it over to the customer.

So i guess the Thai are all immume for bacterials, same goes for me because i haven't been sick here in 12 years.

I buy salad on the markets, supermarkets and eat it in restaurants.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Thian

[bazza40]

Yes, Thailand has a strict import ban on E. coli, salmonella, listeria and norovirus. They're afraid of competition with local vendors of said products.

On the market around the corner i see chickens cut open and inside out to show all their guts. Thai people buy that because i rarely see farang there.

Next to that is a man chopping up frogs and his neighbour cuts living fish with a machete.

If you come close the splashes end up on your shirt, same goes for the guy who chops pigs into pieces.

I never saw them clean anything or it must be the stinky water which is standing in the clogged drains. That water is so dirty that it looks like concrete, i once stepped in it and got wet untill above my ankle.

If you pay cash on the market the guy gives you change with the same hand he used to cut meat. In supermarkets they touch the meatbag with the same glove they used to grab the meat and hand it over to the customer.

So i guess the Thai are all immume for bacterials, same goes for me because i haven't been sick here in 12 years.

I buy salad on the markets, supermarkets and eat it in restaurants.

You may be right. It's said that in Afghanistan, if a child survives past three years of age they will live to be 90, barring accidents or war. That's because they have been exposed to almost every known human pathogen.

[mca]

Lettuce just consider this for a moment.

Groan

I carrot see the point of posting puns on a serious topic.

[Howitzer]

Ridiculous. The warning should relate to one supplier and it should have come from the supermarkets, with brand, batch number, dates etc. The problem was highly localised, albeit serious.

Perhaps the Australian government needs to put up warnings in supermarkets next to the billions of cans of Thai tuna warning people about the risk of scrombroid poisoning as well as the possibility that slave labour may have been used in the production.Same for prawns.

When i saw the thread title i knew i was going to read about some pissed off farang with the mentality like: What! How can some lowly 3rd world country ban imports from a first world country? First world countries like OZ always have clean germ free food while thailand has lower food standards. If it happened the other way OZ banning thai exports it would be totally fine.

[khun custard]

Curiously enough there have been other export destinations where Australian veg and fruit products have created similar concerns recently.

Is it possible that an individual or individuals are deliberately making a problem ? Contamination would not be so difficult in the transportation process.

I agree, the prime market for these perishables is Singapore, HK and then Thailand by volume and turnover.

This is a popular thread by the number of responses, but no one has acknowledged that the salads they regularly buy (imported from Australia) are now missing off the shelves.

We went to Foodland and the Big G on the Klang yesterday and apart from a sorry specimen of USA imported Cos lettuce in Foodland - only local greens where available. We cannot recall seeing Aussie greens for sale here

Perhaps the bulk of the salad greens imported into Thailand are not for retail?

[TEFLKrabi]

Lettuce just consider this for a moment.

Groan

I carrot see the point of posting puns on a serious topic.

Just Cos you didn't get there first

[theguyfromanotherforum]

Thailand's tossing the salad

I thought my joke was hilarious.

[Minnie the Minx]

Lettuce see about that.

Don't forget to eat your greens.

[Prbkk]

Lettuce just consider this for a moment.

Only for a moment, it's not rocket salad

[attrayant]

So i guess the Thai are all immume for bacterials, same goes for me because i haven't been sick here in 12 years.

I buy salad on the markets, supermarkets and eat it in restaurants.

I've never heard of immunities to E.coli or salmonella. Immunity to E. coli would probably do more harm than good because there are some strains of the bacterium that are native to our GI tracts. Unfortunately, the virulent strains of E. coli take advantage of this hospitable environment.

Secondly, these bacteria do their dirty business in our digestive system, where there isn't much of an immune response to provoke. Immune response doesn't usually arise unless the infective agent or an antigen enters the bloodstream. People native to certain regions may be able to tolerate less, um... clean food because they have a more robust microbiota resident in their intestinal tracts. I suppose you could call this a "sort of" immunity - maybe tolerance would be a better word. Although if my inlaws are representative of the population, all this means is a chronic case of the trots rather than full-blown food poisoning.

Sorry for the interjection of science. We now return you to your postings of vegetable puns, already in progress.

[Taffyfromflint]

how does one get salmonella from lettuce? usually meat products fish and fowl and icecream but I cant think of any other product perhaps someone will enlighten me.....

Salmonella infection usually results from ingestion of the bacteria from contaminated food, water or hands. Eggs, milk, meat or poultry are particularly high risk foods. Fruit and vegetables may also be contaminated, especially if manure has been used as fertiliser.

[attrayant]

Yes, as Chipotle recently discovered, relying on "all natural", locally grown ingredients from small farms actually makes your products more susceptible to food-borne illness.

We have made a significant commitment to serving local or organic produce when seasonally available, and a small portion of our restaurants also serves produce purchased from farmers markets seasonally as well. These produce initiatives may make it more difficult to keep quality consistent, and present additional risk of food-borne illnesses given the greater number of suppliers involved in such a system and the difficulty of imposing our quality assurance programs on all such suppliers.

They're now going back to a central kitchen supply chain model for their fresh produce, which allows for better quality control and tracking, in the event another such incident arises.

Edited February 13, 2016 by attrayant

[khun custard]

Lettuce just consider this for a moment.

Groan

I carrot see the point of posting puns on a serious topic.

Just Cos you didn't get there first

No serious shortages per recent Soi 6 reports.......

Plenty of "Honey Roll Over Lett-us" still on the shelves

But still no one has any knowledge of Aussie salad greens on the shelves in Thailand??