Oregon Public Broadcasting

With two recent Salmonella outbreaks that sickened hundreds of Americans, it may seem like foodbourne illnesses are on the rise.  But an annual federal report says otherwise.

The incidence of common foodbourne illnesses has actually changed very little since 2004, according to a report issued Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“There really has been little recent change,” says Dr. Robert Tauxe, CDC deputy director.  “When we compare the year 2008 information with the previous three years, we see no significant change in the incident of infection.  Progress has plateaued.”

“To some degree, that’s an artifact of us doing a better job with better resources,” says William Keene, senior epidemiologist with the Oregon Health Division.  Keene’s salary is paid through funds provided by FoodNet, the federal food monitoring system created by the CDC, Food and Drug Administration, and U.S. Department of Agriculture.

FoodNet data was used in the report on foodbourne illnesses.

Keene says in Oregon, there’s a network of  public health officials taking phone calls, reports from private labs, and lab researchers themselves looking into possible epidemics.

“All that makes it easier to recognize when we have outbreaks,” says Keene.

But Keene cautions against reading too much into the federal study.

“That’s because people use the term ‘foodbourne’ as a very sloppy shorthand for foodbourne and other enteric illnesses,” says Keene.  An enteric illness is a gastrointestinal disease.

But Keene says take a look at the fine print on the study.

“It’s foodbourne and other illnesses that are commonly transmitted by food.  But if you or your kid get sick by swimming in a lake, that’s not a foodbourne illness.  But it’s going to show up in this report,” says Keene.

The FoodNet report is based on data from ten states, including Oregon.  The study looked at more than 18,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of what they term foodbourne illnesses.  Salmonella was the most common infection, with nearly 7500 cases recorded in the study.

Salmonella has been in the limelight this past year after peanuts contaminated with Salmonella Typhimurum caused 691 illnesses from September 2008 to March 2009.

Thirteen of those cases were in Oregon, 24 in Washington, and 17 in Idaho.

More recently, five people in Oregon have tested positive this month to Salmonella Rissen.  The cause is believed to be ground pepper imported from Vietnam.

Still, CDC and FDA officials say foodbourne illnesses have leveled out -- and that concerns them.

“We recognize that we have reached a plateau in the prevention of foodbourne disease and there must be new efforts to develop and evaluate food safety practices from the farm to the table,” says Dr. Robert Tauxe with the CDC.

In order to do this, the CDC, FDA, and USDA are promising to take a more aggressive and proactive approach to food safety. 

They’re hiring more scientists and inspectors, as well as using “rapid response teams” in half a dozen states, including Florida, California, North Carolina, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Michigan.

“These will allow us to move more quickly when there is a need for response and to be more reactive,” says David Acheson, an associate commissioner with the FDA.

The FDA says for the most part, Salmonella in poultry, meat, and eggs is now under control.  But they’re concerned that Salmonella is turning up in items like produce and peanuts.

To help address that, the FDA and CDC are creating Food Protection Workgroups that will include food safety experts around the country, including three from Oregon.

Vance Bybee, Kathleen Wickman, and Susan Kendrick, all with the Oregon Department of Agriculture, will help advice the CDC and FDA on issues such as how technology can be better used to inform the public about outbreaks and recalls of contaminated food.

Most food safety and public health officials agree that the long-term food safety in the U.S. is better than it was in the past.  But concerns do remain over mass distribution and consolidation of the food supply.

“The distribution system is now such that one problem occurring in even one single ingredient in a food can have very wide distribution if it’s a large company that distributes nationally or even internationally,” says Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA.

Another concern raised by Oregon public health epidemiologist William Keene is that humans are simply human.  “So there’s a lot of things that are not likely to change ‘cause people don’t really want to -- they’re difficult to change.  They’re behavioral, they’re social, they’re cultural.”

Keene says hand washing is a great example of this.  Despite years of urging people to wash their hands for at least 20 seconds after using the bathroom, most people still don’t.

Keene points out that we can take all kinds of steps to inspect food to make sure it’s safe, but other factors come into play.  For example, take a restaurant employee who doesn't get paid sick time.  They’re likely to either work while they’re sick or return to work before they are fully recovered so they don’t lose a day or two of pay.

“So there’s a perverse disincentive for people to do the right thing -- defining right thing as not working after you’ve been sick,” says Keene.