Protecting families from contaminated food and water
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Protecting families from contaminated food and water
Posted in Food Safety,Our Blog on November 17, 2022
What are the common causes of foodborne illness?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 9 million people get sick from foodborne disease caused by known pathogens in the United States each year. A significant 56,000 people are hospitalized and 1,300 ultimately die from foodborne infection. The CDC tracks this data, which is helpful to know. But what types of preventative measures can be put into place? Understanding the types of foods that contribute to that problem is a start.
That is where the Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC) comes in. This group consists of the CDC, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS).
In a recent report, this group published a report called “Foodborne Illness Source Attribution Estimates for 2020 for Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157, and Listeria monocytogenes Using Multi-Year Outbreak Surveillance Data,” where data from 1998 to 2020 was analyzed to see exactly what is making us sick.
This report leaves out one of the IFSAC’s priority pathogens, Campylobacter. They opted to leave this one out of the report for this year because the sources of said outbreaks are quite different from the sources of non-outbreak-associated illnesses caused by this pathogen during this reporting period. The agency is working on alternative approaches to estimate the sources of illness caused by this bacteria.
This data was compiled from foodborne outbreaks from 1998 through 2020. A whopping 1,287 outbreaks to be precise after exclusionary methods were used to narrow down data. That is a lot of data! For purposes of making better decisions on how to mitigate food safety, data for the last 5 years was given higher priority as it is more relevant to the goal.
They looked at outbreaks where each confirmed or suspected food was assigned to a single food category. For categorization purposes, these were grouped into 17 different food categories.
The data presented some fairly expected results and some not-so-expected.
While more data gives more information, sometimes creating a more narrow approach helps to reach conclusions. There were 3,749 outbreaks between 1998 and 2020 that were confirmed or suspected to be linked to Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria monocytogenes.
There were 192 outbreaks where more than one pathogen was indicated – both confirmed and suspected. The agency excluded 96 of those according to preset exclusion criteria. Another 1,524 outbreaks were excluded because no confirmed or suspected food was associated with them. For purposes of this data, another 836 outbreaks were excluded because they could not be assigned to one of the 17 categories included in this study. A final 6 were excluded because the outbreak occurred in a U.S. territory.
This brings us to a dataset of 1,287 outbreaks in the United States confirmed or suspected that are linked to a single food category defined in this study.
The bulk of the outbreaks were linked to Salmonella with 960, followed by E. coli O157 with 272, and Listeria monocytogenes coming in with 55.
Illnesses linked to Salmonella came from a wide variety of foods. Included in the top five common foodborne germs, this is not all that surprising. More than 75% of Salmonella illnesses were linked to seven food categories.
The top food categories include:
Salmonella outbreaks were more evenly distributed across the 7 above categories.
E. coli O157, the shiga toxin-producing bacteria was more limited, with more than 80% of all illnesses linked to two food categories.
The top food categories include:
Vegetable row crops were the top linked food category, followed by beef. No outbreaks associated with E. coli were linked to the eggs and oils-sugars categories.
The foodborne bacteria Listeria monocytogenes was most often linked to three food categories.
The top food categories include:
While 75% of illnesses are attributed to these top 3 categories, data is not as reliable as with other pathogens due to the rarity of Listeria monocytogenes outbreaks. As this agency compiles more data throughout the years, these categories may be confirmed with more confidence.
Based on the data from this period, more than 90% of illnesses were attributable to non-meat food categories. The top 3 included the above mentioned with fruits, vegetable row crops, and other produce at the lead. Other categories with smaller attribution percentages included eggs, sprouts, pork, and fish. No outbreaks associated with Listeria monocytogenes were linked to the categories: other meat/poultry, game, other seafood, grains-beans, oils-sugars, or seeded vegetables.
The year 2020 was historic for sure. The COVID impact reached so much of our daily lives. Turns out, it also impacted foodborne illness. For the better, or worse. It is hard to tell.
Only 24 outbreaks caused by the 3 pathogens included in the report were reported that year. With an average closer to 62 for the prior 4 years, this is a significant decline.
There are several potential explanations for this drop in outbreaks.
Fewer people may have considered seeking medical attention amid the beginning of the pandemic. Fear surrounding hospitals and medical offices about the spread of COVID, the potential for extreme wait times, and other accompanying ideas may have decreased the detection of illnesses, which in turn reduced the number of reported outbreaks.
Closures of restaurants, schools and other businesses may have had an impact. With fewer potential places to become infected and more people eating at home, these public health interventions may have reduced the number of reported outbreaks.
In line with public health interventions, fewer public gatherings took place in 2020. Gatherings of large groups were not recommended, so many parties, weddings, and other gatherings were cancelled or postponed, potentially reducing the number of reported outbreaks.
The pandemic consumed most of the public health resources. This likely resulted in a reduced capacity for investigating clusters of illnesses that might have been later recognized and reported as an outbreak. This could have potentially reduced the number of reported outbreaks.
While the data points to potential food categories commonly cited in foodborne outbreaks, it is important to note that not all foods making up that category are equally likely to transmit pathogens, it is a good starting point. For example, raw milk or soft cheeses may be more likely to transmit pathogens than any other product in the dairy category.
This data provides information for scientists, policy makers (federal, state, and local), the food industry, consumer advocacy groups, and the public to take into consideration to assess and determine whether prevention-oriented measures are working and how they can be shaped to better protect the public from foodborne illness.
If you’d like to know more about food safety topics in the news, like “What Foods Make Us Sick? A Study in Foodborne Outbreaks and Causes of Foodborne Illness,” check out the Make Food Safe Blog. We regularly update trending topics, foodborne infections in the news, recalls, and more! Stay tuned for quality information to help keep your family safe, while The Lange Law Firm, PLLC strives to Make Food Safe!
By: Heather Van Tassell (contributing writer, non-lawyer