Can Food Not Fear!

I have been wanting to take the next step in food preservation for years: Pressure canning. Freezers are great, in fact, I can’t imagine ever not having a chest freezer. Freezing has limitations, though. Those are notably space, time, and reliance on uninterrupted electricity. I used to dream about a situation where I could spend a chunk of money buying up the fresh seasonal produce, a chunk of time preparing it, and at the end have a shelf-stable product. This year I learned that pressure canners are not actually as expensive as I thought. Given a boyfriend who was fishing for birthday gift ideas I started to do some (more) research in anticipation of realizing my dream. It almost convinced me that it wouldn’t be a viable thing to do. Almost.

Botulism? Eeeek! BOTULISM!!!!

If you read any online article or book about home canning the first order of business is always to warn you about the connection between botulism and home canning. Everywhere the message is the same: Home canning is an affordable and satisfying way to preserve the taste and nutrition of food, and it’s even fun! …BUT if you don’t do it just right you’ll kill your whole family. No biggie. Just don’t mess up. OR ELSE. *insert scary music*

Can Food Not Fear -- C. botulinum, he's one bad bacteria.
C. botulinum, he’s one bad bacteria

Who in their right mind would undertake such a risky endeavour?! I’m about the farthest thing from a germophobe and all this botulism talk had me pretty uneasy. Whenever I’m up against something like this I tend to read. And read. And read some more.

Here’s some of what I learned: According to the CDC an average of 145 cases of botulism are reported in the U.S. each year. There are three kinds of botulism infection: food-borne, wound, and infant. The “wound” type almost solely affects intravenous heroin users (of a particular type of heroin even) and accounts for 20% of all botulism cases. Another 65% of all the botulism cases are babies who are infected by the bacteria and then become ill or even die more or less because they’re babies. That’s way overly simple, but the point is that the majority of cases linked to the same bacteria that frightens the desire right out of potential home canners is actually a different scenario. Then there’s other 15% of cases, which are the food-borne botulism. (1)

The CDC says those 15% of cases are almost always caused by home-canned food, but as you’ll see, that’s only part of the story. An average of 22 cases of food-borne botulism in the U.S. are reported to the CDC every year. That’s practically nothing when you consider your likelihood of getting into a car accident or getting maimed by one of many statistically common household accidents. It’s still scary when you consider that one of those 22 could be you or a member of your family, though, and just because you wanted to eat veggies from your garden in December.

You know what’s cool? The CDC makes reports available online. Want to see for yourself who made themselves sick with home-canned food each year and what they were doing to some extent? Find the records for 2001-2012 here: http://www.cdc.gov/nationalsurveillance/botulism-surveillance.html

Pie chart: The only time it's OK for botulism and pie to mix
Pie chart: The only time it’s OK for botulism and pie to mix

222 total cases of botulism were reported to the CDC between 2001 and 2012…….

In those 12 years there were 11 confirmed deaths. If you look closer at the cases resulting in death, you’ll see that in many cases there were very likely extenuating circumstances.

16 of the total cases were officially caused by a commercially prepared product straight from the store. I don’t suppose I need to point out that this is not a home canning problem!

An additional 26 cases were people in prison making and drinking batches of “pruno“, a alcoholic drink made with things from the cafeteria. I’m going to venture a guess that in the cases listed the brew was kept hidden in airtight containers where the bacteria responsible for botulism had a chance to become active. Not really home-canning.

70 of the cases occurred in Alaska with native food items, which is over 30% of the total. The traditional diet of Alaskan native peoples includes fermented meat and fish. There is a bigger issue than simply home-canning with this one. For more please see the footnote at the bottom of the page for a few related links.

Another notable aspect of these statistics is that a “case” is a person. 222 people. 118 out of the 222 we’ve been looking at (over half) are not isolated incidences, but part of what the CDC considers an “outbreak” (four or more people poisoned by the same source). In fact 33 “outbreaks” were responsible for the 118 cases. That’s 33 things making over 100 people sick (keep in mind this is going back to all the cases — pruno and fermented fish included).

Here’s a case study of one of these outbreaks for which there is a lot of information. I think it’s revealing and really helpful in understanding this issue better. In 2001 an outbreak in Texas resulted in 16 illnesses. This was due to someone buying improperly handled cans of commercially prepared chilli at a “salvage store” and serving it to their church congregation (2). This was not home-canning! I haven’t cross referenced all the cases in the CDC reports, but I’m willing to bet more of the cases are like this.

From a report in the Oxford Journals, Clinical Infectious Diseases about the Texas chilli outbreak, “The correct diagnosis was delayed by 1–7 days in 4 patients who had classic symptoms of botulism.” This brings up another important aspect of botulism and food borne illness. If you seek care as soon as you identify symptoms and you’re up-front with your doctor about what might have landed you there — e.g., “I ate a jar of beans I canned last summer. The seal was kind of iffy, but I ate them anyway. I’ve read that my symptoms could mean botulism.” — you’re much more likely to receive the care you need. Just by virtue of reading this, you’re aware of the itty-bitty potential for becoming sick with botulism. If you display symptoms it’s not the time to prove how tough your immune system is. Not putting off a visit to the ER and then not just shrugging your shoulders and saying “I dunno” when asked (or not asked) about what might have happened should help get you the timely treatment you need.

In other words, don’t be this guy (also from the Oxford Journals article on the Texas chilli outbreak): One day before the onset of his symptoms, the 17-year-old outlier ate frozen brand X chili, which he had heated but not boiled. The patient reported to his mother that the chili appeared to be spoiled, with a fungus-like appearance in one section of the container. He proceeded to eat the chili despite the indication of spoilage and his mother’s advice against consumption.

The big take-away from this is that these numbers (even if limited to the USA) include everyone who home-cans just like you and I might — that being with a bit of research under our belts and an iota of common sense — as well as those who don’t. Obviously your risk of food borne illness goes up exponentially if you aren’t even aware of food safety issues.

Can Food Not Fear: Botulism needs boundaries
C. botulinum may be one bad bacterium, but fortunately he’s one that respects boundaries. Good fences make C. botulinum a perfectly good neighbor. (If you don’t mind neighbors who sit on the other side of the fence plotting to kill you if you make it easy enough.)

A friend showed me this post from a food blogger recently:

How Not To Die From Botulism: What Home Canners Need To Know About The World’s Most Deadly Toxin. It explains so much about botulism, and in a simple fun way. Make sure to click on the news link about the guy who contracted botulism from his home-canned elk meat, and make sure to note his process. Not a canning role model, and surely a CDC statistic for the year.

Am I saying you don’t have to be careful? Absolutely not. Of course you should be conscientious and practice home-canning according to established safety guidelines. What I’m trying to put out there with this blog post is that as long as you are practicing safe canning protocols there’s no reason to be preoccupied with worry. No reason to worry at all, really. While botulism may be a super nasty critter, it’s one that respects boundaries. You just have to set them.

Update August 2015: Botulism does happen! Here’s an article that covers a recent outbreak from Food Safety News: Rapid Response Kept April’s Ohio Botulism Outbreak in Check. Notice something? The cases were tied to a single incidence of improperly canned potatoes — someone using waterbath canning, which is not adequate for canning potatoes.


REFERENCES:

(1) http://www.cdc.gov/nczved/divisions/dfbmd/diseases/botulism/

(2) http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/37/11/1490.full

FOOTNOTE:

Native Inuit and aboriginal North American diet links:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bodyhorrors/2011/08/14/this-aint-yo-mommas-muktuk-or-fermented-seal-flipper-botulism-being-cold-other-joys-of-artic-living/#.VAEiaEvoZDM