Tag: Guest blog post

Guest Contributor Doralice Goes: On botulism

October 25, 2026

Doralice Goes is an inspirational and tireless advocate working to raise awareness about foodborne botulism. Her personal experience with the disease, including the challenges of obtaining a diagnosis and the lack of preparedness for such a situation, motivated her to investigate the study of this condition and to track recent cases worldwide. She gives presentations within the food industry, sharing not only her story of survival but also critical information regarding the symptoms of botulism and the vital importance of food safety. With sensitivity and impact, she addresses how minor lapses in food handling can lead to serious health consequences, offering a unique opportunity to promote a sense of responsibility in both food production and consumption. She also speaks at universities and hospitals, demystifying the disease and highlighting the importance of early diagnosis.

eFoodAlert is pleased to share with our readers this contribution from Doralice Goes, in her own words.

Botulism is a serious, non-contagious, potentially fatal neuroparalytic disease caused by neurotoxins produced by strains of Clostridium botulinum, Clostridium baratii, and Clostridium butyricum. While commonly found in the soil, the bacteria only multiply and produce their toxin under favorable conditions.

Five forms of botulism have been recognized: infant botulism, foodborne botulism, wound botulism, iatrogenic botulism (as a result of injections with Botox), and adult intestinal toxemia. Although rare, the disease has been observed in all five contemporary forms across six continents, necessitating efficient monitoring by health authorities.

Among the five known types, foodborne botulism caused by Clostridium botulinum is the most prevalent, affecting homemade, artisanal, and industrial products alike. This spore-forming bacterium is found in soil and is far more heat resistant than more common foodborne disease organisms. It is able to multiply in food when favorable growth conditions are present: an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment, the presence of moisture and sugar, a water activity level between 0.93 and 0.97, and a pH greater than 4.6.

An analysis of cases recorded over the last three years across six continents points to various sources. In 2023, these included canned sardines served at a restaurant, sun-dried tomatoes, and chicken pot pies. In 2024, cases were linked to artisanal pesto sauce sold at a street market, artichoke soup, homemade cactus-based products, industrially canned mackerel, canned beans, chicken mortadella, pickled eggs, almond milk, and mayonnaise. In 2025, instances involved carrot cake, garlic confit, Neapolitan-style broccoli in sandwiches, chicken pie from a bakery, and avocado pulp.

These occurrences emphasize the need to broaden our understanding of the foods associated with this disease, which extend well beyond the common perception of canned goods, cured meats, preserves, and hearts of palm. Such awareness is essential for preventing further contamination, minimizing associated risks, and executing product recalls, all of which are vital to upholding the fundamental right to healthy and safe food.

Most importantly, the disease can be prevented by adopting food safety practices, such as heating canned or preserved foods to at least 80°C for 10 minutes before consumption , as well as by paying proper attention to expiration dates and ensuring proper storage, especially in tropical countries where temperatures can easily reach 30°C or 40°C.

Botulinum toxin causes paralysis of organs and muscles and typically requires a long hospital stay, including support for breathing, urinating, and eating. Following hospital discharge, the patient must remain off work to focus on motor rehabilitation. There is only one antidote—botulinum antitoxin—which is stored in strategic locations and distributed on request by health authorities.The antitoxin is not kept on-site at individual hospitals and must be administered within seven days of the onset of intoxication. Currently, the case fatality rate is approximately 5% to 10%.

I experienced this lack of preparedness firsthand during a year spent in the ICU after contracting foodborne botulism here in Brazil. It was then that I decided to study this disease in depth, raise awareness, become a reference on the subject, and offer support to people around the world going through the same thing.

As soon as I left the hospital, I began researching botulism. It has been nearly four years of study. I am currently pursuing a master’s degree, with plans to continue into a PhD and postdoctoral research. I want to advance botulism diagnosis and treatment globally. Above all, I want to prevent this terrible disease that shatters lives.

Every week, I receive inquiries from all over the world. From people who have used Botox and are still experiencing symptoms of botulism but have not received timely diagnosis or treatment. From people who contracted foodborne botulism and endured the unimaginable with receiving any proper care—both during the acute phase and in the subsequent, long-term stages. Recently, for example, I heard from a person in Crimea.

I don’t speak English, though I am currently learning the language. Thanks to Google Translate, I can communicate with anyone, in any language. Since contracting botulism, I sometimes struggle with typing, and because the keys on my phone are so close together, I often hit the wrong one. As a result, my texts sometimes contain errors. But none of that matters when you can simply be human and help others. I truly believe I have made a difference regarding botulism.

People who had never heard of it are now paying attention. Doctors who previously failed to diagnose it now consider it when treating patients in the ICU. Academics are delving deeper into the scientific literature. And those living with the disease anywhere in the world now have someone they can turn to. I feel useful! This goes far beyond just “work.” It is my life’s purpose. Even on a Sunday, I am here, fully committed to this cause.

Doralice Goes is a Brazilian master’s student in health sciences and is dedicated to researching botulism. She is also a survivor of the disease. In 2022, she spent 314 days hospitalized in an intensive care unit (ICU), completely quadraplegic and dependent on a ventilator. Her book, BOTULISMO. Um risco invisível à vida, was published in 2024. It is now out of print.

You can connect with Doralice on Instagram at @doralice.goes and on LinkedIn at Doralicegoes.

Guest Blog: Does The “No Illnesses” Language Belong in Recall Notices?

The following Guest Blog first appeared on Food Safety News, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author, Dan Flynn.

Does The “No Illnesses” Language Belong in Recall Notices?

by Dan Flynn

Food companies that are voluntarily recalling a product usually use the language suggested by regulatory agencies that is then distributed electronically via the federal government websites. Recalls not connected to outbreaks almost always contain a line saying there are no reported illnesses associated with the recalled product.

William F. Keene, Oregon’s senior state epidemiologist, thinks it’s time for reporters and editors to “not let themselves be duped into amplifying press release boilerplate.”

Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) have templates for companies to use when writing a recall announcement. They are:

FDA: ”No illnesses have been reported to date.”

FSIS: “There have been no reports of illnesses associated with consumption of these products.”

“Until they have the isolate(s) serotyped, have PFGE’d (conducted a pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analysis), and compared to PulseNet or analogous data,” says Keene, “they are just blowing smoke.” He says that without subtyping data, the media should not fall for it. The only accurate report is that there is no way of knowing (at this time) if there are any associated illnesses.

Dr. David Acheson, who previously held top posts at both FSIS and FDA before becoming a partner at Leavitt Partners, says Keene “is correct, but nobody other than a microbiologist would know that the heck that means and the basic statement from the regulators is still correct.”

Acheson says the point of recall announcements is to answer the public’s “what should I do” questions, and he prefers keeping it “simple and specific.” Acheson says he might add the word “yet” to statements about no illnesses being reported.

Phyllis Entis, the food safety microbiologist and author, who publishes the highly respected eFoodAlert, covering food recalls worldwide, goes a step further than Keene.

“I think that an absence of a ‘no illnesses’ statement would be preferable to the current boilerplate,” she says. “I agree that we should be asking the question, and I have queried CDC in some cases. At times, I even get an answer!”

And Entis notes that boilerplate is used worldwide. The XL Foods recall, the largest beef recall in Canada’s history, originally came out with this line from the template: “There have been on reported illnesses associated with the consumption of these products.”

A short time later the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) was confirming 18 cases of E coli O157:H7 from XL’s contaminated beef.

Keene, who has solved many a multistate outbreak, admits he is motivated by a desire to “light a fire” under food companies to get them to turn over isolates to public health labs so they can be subtyped. Only then can the food isolates be matched to any human cases that might exist.

“As you can imagine, Keene says, “this is not a prospect that excites many food processors, as it literally asking for trouble. I think making it clear that we don’t know if there might be illnesses will prompt people to ask more of the right questions.”

Keene notes that often-ill people who are matched to contaminated food are never asked (or told) if they ate it. He says the system is complicated, with the left hand often not knowing what the right hand is doing.

Carol L. Tucker-Foreman, distinguished food policy fellow at the Consumer Federation of America and USDA’s former Assistant Secretary for Food and Consumer Services, says where there is a recall, there is risk.

“The current FSIS language suggests that there are no reported illnesses as yet and therefore no risk to public health,” she says. “But if that were the case there would be no recall. The recall means the company and FSIS know some meat from the recalled lot is available to the public. That means there is some continuing risk and the agency should say so.”

With her experience in and out of the federal government, Tucker-Foreman says both FDA and FSIS “are eager not to alarm the public unnecessarily or create to much of a problem for the company where there’s no reported illnesses.”

She says food companies “particularly hate the fact that a press release and recall occur based only on plant testing, However, there is no recall unless FSIS believes some contaminated product left the plant and has not yet been recover.”

For his part, Keene is the first to acknowledge that most recalls are not associated with illnesses. However, he says, that is only partially true because nobody is asking. If isolates were turned over to public health labs and searches for matches conducted, then we’d know more about whether or not there were illnesses.

Keene says even then if the test produced a common pattern and there was no spiking of the pattern, its unlikely CDC would bother getting back to “state epi people” and the matches might not be contemporaneous enough to make it worthwhile to health officials to get back in touch with the ill people.

Keene was last in the national news in September 2011 when Del Monte Fresh Produce dropped a lawsuit against the epidemiologist that some said sought to put the science of epidemiology on trial. Del Monte was upset because some of its Central American grown cantaloupe were subjected to an import alert.

© Food Safety News

About the author: Dan Flynn is a Denver-based writer and editor with more than ten years of food safety experience. As a public affairs professional, he worked with government and regulatory agencies at the local, state, and federal levels. At present, he is Editor of Food Safety News.

Guest Blog: Going Public The FDA Way

The following Guest Blog first appeared on barfblog.com, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author, Doug Powell.

Going Public: there may be some rules but FDA says they’re a secret

by Dr. Douglas Powell

The same agencies that tout a science-based approach to foodborne illness aren’t so good at one of the 3 legs of the risk analysis stool – risk communication.

It gets lots of pandering, but almost all government agencies and industry groups, regardless of geography, are really bad at risk communication when performance is stacked up against what has been proven to work (not very much).

When to go public about health warnings – like potential outbreaks of foodborne disease – remains contentious. And no one is willing to come clean about it and say, this is when we go public and why. Or at least write it down. Bureaucrat 101 – write it down, have to do it; so don’t write it down.

I understand the flexibility public health types require to do their jobs effectively, but much of the public outrage surrounding various outbreaks – salmonella in tomatoes/jalapenos, 2008, listeria in Maple Leaf deli meats, 2008, the various leafy green recalls and outbreaks of 2010, 2011, 2012, the 1996 outbreak of cyclospora linked to Guatemalan raspberries, and the delay in clamping down on Iowa eggs – can be traced to screw ups in going public.

It’s long been a tenet of risk communication that it is better to go early with public information rather than later. People can handle all kinds of information, especially when they are informed in an honest and forthright manner.

So it’s of no surprise that the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) couldn’t find anyone within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to say, this is how we decide when to go public.

“FDA has interim internal procedures describing the steps it will take to order a food recall, but these procedures have not been made public, and the agency has not provided information on when they will be. Federal internal control standards call for federal agencies to clearly document
policies, procedures, techniques, and mechanisms for implementing management directives and to make that documentation readily available for examination.”

“Similarly, FDA officials told us that they have not decided whether they will issue regulations or industry guidance to clarify for the public FDA’s procedures for ordering food recalls and that FSMA has no requirement to do so. Federal internal control standards direct federal agencies to
ensure adequate means of communicating with and obtaining information from external stakeholders who may have a significant impact on the agency achieving its goals.

“About a week-and-a-half before our closing meeting, FDA officials provided us interim internal procedures for ordering recalls of food. These interim procedures include detailed information on such topics as which officials are to be involved in an ordered food recall decision and what methods and timelines FDA officials will use to communicate with companies involved in such a recall. The interim procedures also state that FDA is to incorporate procedures into the
agency’s publicly available Regulatory Procedures Manual and other FDA documents. FDA officials have not, however, provided timelines on when they expect to make procedures publicly available.”

And it goes on like that for 61 pages.

GAO recommends, among other things, that FDA issue regulations or industry guidance to clarify its ordered food recall process and implement recommendations from others to address FDA communication challenges in advising the public about food recalls and outbreaks. The agency neither agreed nor disagreed with GAO’s recommendations but cited ongoing agency actions that are to address most recommendations.

To strengthen FDA’s process for ordering recalls, the Secretary of Health and Human Services should direct the Commissioner of FDA to document FDA’s process for ordering food recalls in regulations or industry guidance to include information on how the agency will weigh evidence on whether a recall is necessary.

To address FDA’s communication challenges in advising the public about food recalls and outbreaks, the Secretary of Health and Human Services should direct the Commissioner of FDA to implement recommendations from the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council to develop, in conjunction with other federal agencies, a coordinated plan for crisis communications.

To address FDA’s communication challenges in advising the public about food recalls and outbreaks, the Secretary of Health and Human Services should direct the Commissioner of FDA to implement recommendations from FDA’s risk communication committee to develop a policy for communications during emerging events.

The full report is available at http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-589.

About the author: Dr. Douglas Powell is a professor of food safety at Kansas State University and the publisher of barfblog.com. Powell is passionate about food, has five daughters, and is an OK goaltender in pickup hockey.