Meritech's Handwashing Systems Removed 99.997% of E-Coli in Laboratory Studies

GOLDEN, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Meritech, a division of Resurgent Health and Medical and a leader in automated handwashing and sanitizing technology, announced today that independent clinical laboratory studies showed that Meritech’s handwashing systems removed 99.997% of E-Coli, a marker organism used to test the efficacy of Meritech’s hand hygiene products. The studies were performed in June 2008 at BioScience Laboratories in Bozeman, MT.

“We are thrilled with the results of the many studies we have performed over the years and particularly pleased with our recent clinical results that demonstrate the effectiveness of our technology in cleaning and sanitizing hands”, said Jim Glenn, CEO of Resurgent Health and Medical and Meritech. “There is a growing awareness of the problem of poor hand hygiene practices in the health care and food industries and of the infections and illnesses caused world wide by the failure to observe basic hand washing guidelines. Our goal as a company is to provide a technology and a product line to help in the effort to eliminate these infections and illnesses, and we are very pleased with our recent round of clinical testing that demonstrates just how effective our products are. More and more companies and hospitals throughout the world are adopting our technology as part of their commitment to reduce these risks.”

This study evaluated the performance of Meritech’s Elf automated hand cleansing system set for a total cycle length of 12 seconds using 5 ml Chlorhexidine Gluconate 2% (CHG) antimicrobial agent against E-Coli as the marker organism. The transient microorganism reduction by Meritech’s automated system was measured at a statistical summary of the mean log10 of 3.49, which equated to a reduction of 99.97% removal of the E-Coli, with some results having a higher log10 of up to 4.54, which equates to a reduction of 99.997% removal of the organism. These studies involve rigorous testing by an independent laboratory using up to 16 human test subjects in an environment intended to duplicate conditions found in health care and food industry environments. Unlike in vitro studies, these clinical studies demonstrate the effectiveness of Meritech’s products in actual use.

The testing methods are based on the methodology specified by the Food and Drug Administration Tentative Final Monograph (TFM) for Effectiveness Testing of an Antiseptic Handwash or Health-Care Personnel Handwash (FR59:116, 17 June 94, pp. 31448-31450) and ASTM E 1174 Standard Test method for Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Healthcare Personnel Handwash Formulations.

The CleanTech touchless system performs a fully-automated twelve-second wash, sanitize and rinse cycle. Using Meritech’s proprietary Chlorhexidine Gluconate 2% (CHG2%) sanitizing solution, Meritech’s hand hygiene products remove over 99.9% of pathogens and continue to kill germs for up to six hours. The FDA certified CHG-based sanitizer contains mild skin conditioners to continuously improve skin health while removing dangerous germs.

The system further boosts compliance by ensuring a pleasant, uniform hand wash using high-pressure water jets that perform a consistent wash-and-sanitize cycle every time the machines are used.

About Meritech & Resurgent Health & Medical

Meritech and Resurgent Health and Medical delivers state of the art employee hygiene technologies to food industries, hospitals, and healthcare facilities that are serious about infection prevention and the elimination of dangerous pathogens in the industry. Our patented CleanTech® infection prevention technology brings science and precision to the process of removing dangerous microbes from employee hands. For almost 20 years, CleanTech® brand systems have been used worldwide in agriculture, food processing, food service, cleanroom manufacturing and healthcare. CleanTech uses up to 75% less water than manual handwashing, discharges 75% less wastewater, and reduces waste in soap utilization.

For more information, visit http://www.resurgenthealth.com or http://www.meritech.com
Press release taken from Business Wire

Meritech Launches New Boot Washing System

Meritech, which specializes in automated hand and boot washing equipment, has announced a new addition to its line of products. The company is pleased to now offer a walk-through, high volume throughput boot washing/scrubbing system titled the XBW 2.0.

The XBW 2.0 improves plant productivity by allowing 15 people per minute to thoroughly clean, scrub, and sanitize boots. This new system cleans the soles, sides, and tops of the boots. The XBW 2.0 ensures a faster, more thorough, and a more cost-effective method for food plants to address the vital issue of washing and scrubbing the boots of employees entering a work area many times during a shift, the company said. The first unit was sent in July to a deli commissary of a large retail chain.

“The first XBW 2.0 was shipped to a large retail chain commissary in July, and we are thrilled to have the only U.S. manufactured product available. The system is geared to specifically move people in and out of processing plants quickly and efficiently,” said Jim Glenn, CEO of Meritech. “We are helping medium- to large-sized companies expedite their employees’ entry and exiting routine, which has proved in the past to be a time-consuming and costly process until this new product.”

The XBW 2.0 is constructed of heavy duty stainless steel and operates using a series of horizontal brushes to effectively sanitize the soles and sides of most boot configurations. The XBW 2.0 is an industrialized walk-through system designed for high volume facilities with a significant number of employees.

Mexico Hot and Bothered Over Jalapeno Scare

The epidemic salmonella strain, identified as Salmonella Saintpaul, has now made 1,251 people sick and has placed more than 229 people in United States hospitals. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration stated that it found a jalapeno pepper contaminated with the salmonella strain and warned the U.S. public not to eat jalapeno peppers. But the Mexican public is jumping to the defense of their crop.

The warning has done very little to stop the consumption of the jalapeno, both in the United States where the jalapeno pepper is enjoying increased popularity, and in Mexico where the jalapeno is a staple of everyday cuisine.

Jalapenos are among the oldest domesticated crops in the Americas and were harvested before the Spanish conquest in the 1500s. Jalapenos got their name from the eastern Mexican city of Jalapa. The ancient Aztec royalty enjoyed to drink concoctions of chile and chocolate and Mayan culture attempted to cure everything from dysentery, to asthma, to vertigo with spicy powders.

“Mexico has one of the best cuisines in the world. In the United States they don’t understand, they have hamburgers and hot dogs. That’s not a tradition, that’s just junk. In the United States, they have weak stomachs, everything makes them sick,” said Pedro Garcia, 46, a school administrator.

Mexico’s agriculture ministry believes that the salmonella strain has never been found in Mexico and points the blame to the Texas packing factory where the pepper was processed.

The jalapeno pepper is a major export for Mexico, especially to the United States. Over 247,000 acres of peppers are grown in Mexico, with 80 percent of them being jalapenos. Exports have risen between 10 percent and 15 percent every year over the past decade.

Inspectors are stopping truck loads of the 100 tons or more of peppers crossing the United States border from Mexico every day, which raises the risk of produce being left to rot before the product reaches stores, said Jose Manuel Gochicoa who runs the chile growers’ association in Mexico, which is the world’s biggest producer of fresh chiles. “By creating this bottleneck at the border, people are just going to stop exporting,” states Gochicoa.

In spite of the outbreak, jalapenos have become increasingly popular in the U.S., in both Mexican restaurants and in supermarkets. Dozens of types of chiles, some which cause sweating and crying, have become a cooking trend in the United States. “It’s the new fashion,” said Gochicoa.

View the original story on MSNBC

CleanTech ELF and CleanTech IC Receive NSF International Approval

Meritech, Inc., a division of Resurgent Health and Medical, is pleased to announce that the newest CleanTech ELF (Extremely Low Footprint) and CleanTech IC (Infection Control) has recently received NSF International approval. NSF International, The Public Health and Safety Company™ is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization that regulates product certification, standards development, education and risk management for the public health and safety.

The CleanTech touchless system performs a ten to twelve, fully-automated wash, sanitize, and rinse cycle. The sanitizing solution used is Meritech’s proprietary Chlorhexidine Gluconate (CHG) which has been proven to remove over 99.9% of pathogens and continues to kill germs for up to six hours in a single rinse cycle. CHG, which is FDA certified, contains mild skin conditioners to continuously enhance skin health, while also removing dangerous germs.

Meritech, which is a leader in automated handwashing and sanitizing technology, already has NSF approval for the CleanTech 400 model, and now the Cleantech ELF and CleanTech IC are joining the ranks. The systems further enhance compliance by ensuring a pleasant, uniform handwash using high-pressure water jets that perform a uniform wash-and-sanitize cycle every time the machines are used.

“Our number one priority is safety and efficiency and this validates our commitment to our customers and our products,” states CEO of Meritech, Jim Glenn. “We continue to take whatever measures we need to provide products that insure the safety of the industries and the public they serve.”

Meritech’s CleanTech Automated Handwashing systems are most commonly used in restaurant, hospitality, and healthcare environments.

To receive more information on these models and Meritech’s other automated hand and bootwashing equipment, please call (800)932-7707 or go to http://www.meritech.com/ OR http://www.resurgenthealth.com/

System for Protecting the Nation's Food Supply is Under Scrutiny

This summer's salmonella outbreak could go down as the national food supply's biggest unsolved mystery.

Instead of a smoking gun, the only clue is a single tainted jalapeño pepper with the rare strain of Salmonella Saintpaul found at a Texas produce distribution center.

The difficulty in finding answers to one of the nation's most complicated and longest-running food-borne-illness cases has turned a spotlight on the beleaguered Food and Drug Administration, as well as the system for protecting the U.S. food supply.

Tomatoes, the original suspect, have been released from questioning but not exonerated. Now federal inspectors have fingered jalapeño peppers from Mexico as a potential source of contamination. But the trail is getting cold, and it's getting hard to find enough evidence to isolate the source of an outbreak that has sickened 1,294 people since April.

Critics say it's evidence of a system that is broken and desperately in need of an overhaul.
''The bottom line is this is not working,'' said Carl Nielsen, a 28-year veteran of the FDA and former director of import inspections. ``There have to be radical changes.''

''This is not a matter of throwing a few more million dollars at the problem and a tomatogate wouldn't happen,'' said Nielsen, who now works as a consultant.

While this salmonella outbreak may be getting more public scrutiny than most, the issues aren't new. At the heart of the problem is a decentralized system for tracking food-borne illnesses that requires coordination of multiple agencies, including the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state health departments.

Add to that a multitude of challenges, such as lack of recall authority, funding shortfalls and not enough regulatory control over foreign agricultural practices. Together, they add up to a prescription for disaster.

''We need to move forward with much-needed modernization of our national food safety laws,'' said U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, a Central Florida Republican, who is co-sponsoring new food safety legislation. ``These laws haven't really changed since the Eisenhower administration.''
But in today's global economy, food is imported from all over the world and shipped cross-country, traveling thousands of miles from the farm to your table.

Industry experts and congressional leaders agree that there must be a uniform standard regarding consumer warnings.

Now, seven weeks after the FDA warned consumers to stop eating certain kinds of tomatoes, the investigation is focusing on jalapeño peppers grown in Mexico. It may have been salsa or a garnish that made consumers sick.

Read the full article here

Salmonella Traced to Mexican Jalapeno at Texas Plant

A jalapeno pepper, grown on a farm in Mexico and found at a Texas distribution center, was tainted with the salmonella strain that has sickened more than 1,200 people, U.S. regulators said.

The Food and Drug Administration is urging Americans not to eat fresh jalapenos after the contaminated pepper was found at the Agricola Zaragosa distribution center in McAllen, Texas, said David Acheson, the agency's assistant commissioner for foods, in a conference call with reporters today. Officials don't know if the contamination occurred at the farm, the center or elsewhere.

The finding is a ``very important break in the case'' for regulators after weeks of investigating the outbreak, first linked to raw tomatoes on June 7, Acheson said. Officials, who don't know where the contamination occurred, are now visiting the farm in Mexico and searching distribution records to determine if any other produce was tainted.

``Although the pepper was grown in Mexico, it may not have been contaminated there,'' Acheson told reporters. ``The critical part of this is not to say, `We've got this figured out.'''


Read the full article here

FDA Says Tomatoes Not Linked to Salmonella Outbreak

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday, July 17, that it has determined that fresh tomatoes now available in the domestic market are not associated with the current outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul. The statement also removes the crippling June 7 warning against eating certain types of red raw tomatoes, which nearly brought to its knees the tomato industry.

The FDA statement still warns that elderly persons, infants and people with impaired immune systems, should avoid eating raw jalapeño and raw serrano peppers. Now, Jalapeño pepper importers have seen their trade being effectively crippled by the latest developments in the investigation to trace the source of the bacteria.

The problem is that the government-imposed Salmonella tests take too long, and the Jalapeños are spoiled in warehouses while waiting for the green light to reach customers. Testing takes several days, while importers waited as long as ten days for test results, and had to destroy the stock because it was rotten.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in its latest press release that 1,220 persons infected with Salmonella Saintpaul with the same genetic fingerprint have been identified in 42 states, the District of Columbia and Canada, quoting the CDC.

Read the full article here