Salmonella on a stick

I've been following the Salmonella in chocolate story (BBC report) with a sideways glance up to today, presuming it's the media getting its knickers in a twist over nothing.

Now I've read this report on the foods standards agency website I can't believe what they're saying.

The paragraphs which caught my attention were:

Cadbury’s risk assessment does not address the risk of salmonella in chocolate in a way which the ACMSF would regard as a modern approach to risk assessment.

In the ACMSF’s view, using the MPN approach to assess the risk of small levels of salmonella contamination in a product like chocolate is unreliable.

Basically, the MPN method is one used for water and milk testing, where the sample can be mixed thoroughly before and during testing. It uses statistics and different sized samples to assess the probability of the presence of the organism in the whole batch, based on a small amount.

Basically, they're saying it's like checking a handful of horse's hay for a needle instead of not letting needles come anywhere near the haystack in the first place.

It doesn't have to be there in large numbers

Salmonella loves lactose. nice warm melty summer lactose in cadbury's kids bars... yummy... wrapped in nice protective fat and then kept at incubation temperatures in my pocket with a long shelf life... hmmm...

Well anyway, I think for once the company in question deserves to be publicly humiliated.

I'm just glad I'm not the company's microbiologist ...