Linking food poisoning incidents more likely these days
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If you’ve ever had a brief ailment -- queasy, diarrhea, perhaps -- it’s pretty likely you’ve wondered if it was something you ate. These days, food recalls have focused attention on contamination in the food supply.
One thing that’s changed is the ability to detect and connect food safety problems.
Twenty-five years ago, if 700 people in 46 states reported getting salmonella poisoning – the numbers from the recent peanut-related outbreak – no one would have linked them, says Linda Harris, a microbiologist at UC Davis.
“Suddenly, especially when there’s a unique [DNA] fingerprint, it pops out as being a cluster of people. Now suddenly there’s a reason to investigate an outbreak,” she said.
It’s estimated that 1 in 4 Americans gets food poisoning every year. About 40,000 cases of salmonellosis are reported annually in the United States, and an estimated 400 people die, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The incidence of salmonella infection, which can be transmitted to people by many routes, has not declined in recent years, according to 2007 statistics, the CDC said in a report.
“We have to put it in perspective,” Harris says. “I don’t want the message to consumers to be, ‘You’re going to have to take a stress reliever to go to the grocery store because you are wondering is it going to get me this time.’ ”
But she also says that people don’t always pay attention.
As a microbiologist, Harris says, she’s very interested in developments in food-borne disease. But if the recall were for tires or appliances, “I would be completely oblivious to it, so on some level I can appreciate that the average consumer has so much going on to pay attention.”
Just how oblivious?
A few years back, she says, an ice cream company recalled some of its products. Because it was a home-delivery company, it could contact its customers and tell them not to eat the ice cream. But people still ignored the warning.
-- Mary MacVean
