Food Politics

How does food borne illness get reported anyway?

I ate some sushi once and puked my guts out all night long. A couple of days later I went to the restaurant and told them. They said no one else had reported anything which surprised me as I had not eaten anything else that day that I even mildly suspected. I didn’t see where there was much else I could do.

So, do you have to become ill enough to go to the doctor or emergency before something gets reported? What is the proper thing to do when one suspects food related illness? Does it matter if it was the food as long as you recover without lasting damage?

“So far, we still are dealing with guilt by association, but public relations? How about just producing safe food in the first place?”

Unfortunately, hiring a PR firm too often seems to be the main result of these cases, such as the recent massive PR effort that followed the recall of millions of cans of Slim-Fast shakes because of bacterial contamination.

Bill Marker produces a lot of good information.

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This is getting ridiculous. Pepper? Salmonella comes from the intestines of animals, like pigs and cows. These meat companies always propose some kind of bizarre leap in logic to deflect their unsafe foods onto other industries. The only way pepper could become contaminated with salmonella is if it came into contact with a meat or other animal product. Of course it did – it’s on your salami!

I wish you would start calling companies out on this BS. They always say it’s not the meat (which, along with eggs and milk, are the only actual food sources of salmonella) – because that would lead to greater oversight of their slaughterhouses and general meat safety, which is full of inherent risks.

Really interesting post. There seems to be way too many outbreaks of food borne illness in recent years. But, misha, you seem correct. It doesn’t seem likely that pepper could be the culprit.

We definitely need some type of food safety legislation!

I’m just playing devil’s advocate here but is the incidence of food borne illness actually increasing or is there just better publicity resulting from web 2.0 and social media?

[...] recalled after 137 people are sickened by Salmonella – Food Politics   Leave a [...]

Daniel — there’s better reporting by individuals due to increased awareness, so there’s better follow up by Public Health, and of course news flies at the speed of an internet link nowadays. So part of the increase is just increased awareness.

In saying that, our food systems are so global now that any outbreak can affect hundreds or thousands more people than if we only relied on local food systems. And once an outbreak crosses state or country borders the television media is more likely to grab onto it.

Contaminated canteloupe and spinach were shocks to many people but these outbreaks just never went national before so we didn’t hear about them.

Food poisoning is fascinating. Say you eat a pizza with 3 other people and you’re the only one who gets sick. It could still be the pizza — all it takes is a thumbprint by the server with hepatitis to infect one tiny area of a shared food. Or the whole pizza could be contaminated, but your stomach pH or gut flora might make you more susceptible than everyone else.

If it’s the pepper that’s contaminated, and not the meat, expect to hear some reports on the role of irradiation of foods in dealing with contamination of spices. Maybe the lesser of two evils??

@Misha and Misty

Fruits and vegetables are indeed a source of Salmonella infection. Between 1996 and 2007, a recent census of produce outbreaks counted 33 epidemics from Salmonella-contaminated fruits and vegetables. While it used to be thought that contamination of vegetables came solely from exposure to run off water contaminated with animal feces or organic manures (which are primarily derived from animal feces), recent data suggests that’s simply not the case. Most contamination appears to occur postharvest, suggesting that humans are the primary vector. More recent data suggests that Salmonella typhimurium can invade, form a biofilm on, and divide within plants themselves, stimulating an immune response within the infected plants (see http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002279).

I know vegans and vegetarians want to blame meat consumption for all the food pathogenicity that exists out there, but the #1 source of food poisoning outbreaks in both number of victims affected and number of outbreaks continues to be from green, leafy vegetables (see CDC).

I personally don’t think irradiation is the answer. I’m of the belief that the endogenous microorganisms (e.g. wild yeasts) that normally grow on fruits and vegetables act to outcompete non-endogenous species. Once you kill off these endogenous species, the plants will actually become more susceptible to infection. Irradiation only kills during the irradiation process. After irradiation, the irradiated fruits and vegetables will somehow need to be packaged into a sterilized environment. As long as they continue to be exposed to humans, they can be reinfected with human pathogens post-irradiation.

Just curious, are these salamis traditionally made, i.e. salted, innoculated with microorganisms, and air dried, or are these salami-like meats.

Makes me want to quit my job and start an urban homestead to become completely self-sufficient! Only I love my job and my gardening is much more about enthusiasm than actual skill.

In order for bacteria to survive, there would have had been some moisture of some kind in the black pepper prior to grinding it up. Otherwise I would think the meat would be more suspect than a dry spice.

[...] Another Salmonella outbreak: this time Salami (maybe) [...]