Food Poisoning In Hostel

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31726, 9 July 1968, Page 8

Food Poisoning In Hostel

Efforts were being made to ensure that food poisoning did not again break out in a Christchurch hostel, said the supervising district inspector of health (Mr J. B. Snoad) yesterday. He was commenting on an outbreak affecting 20 young men who ate meat and gravy for their Sunday dinner last week. About 15 hours after the meal was eaten the men experienced symptoms typical of Clostridium welchii food poisoning, Mr Snoad said. These included stomach pains, nausea and diarrhoea, and most received medical treatment by their doctors. The outbreak was probably caused by the gravy the men had eaten being cooked the previous day and kept overnight without being refrigerated. It had been heated and served with meat for the Sunday meal. “We are giving talks to the staff on the dangers of food poisoning to make sure this sort of thing does not happen again,” he said. The organism responsible was sometimes a contaminant of meat and would survive boiling temperatures for five hours, he added. “If cooked meat products are stored without refrigeration and have had the oxygen driven off in the cooking process, as was the case with gravy in this instance, then food poisoning is always a possibility,” said Mr Snoad. “The safe thing to do with any gravy, soup, stews or large roasts that are to be held over is to cool them quickly and then keep them in the refrigerator.” Another food poisoning case had affected a married woman living in the Waimairi County and the symptoms in this case had begun between five and 12 hours after eating the stis-

pected foods which might have been either beef stock soup or a curry mince pie. Investigations were inconclusive.

Mr Snoad said anyone suffering from food poisoning symptoms should consult their own doctor and the Health Department should be notified so that an investigation could be made. Other notifiable diseases reported were one case of infective hepatitis, a child in the Heathcote area, a man in his sixties with pulmonary tuberculosis, and a child in the city with salmonellosis.