By Laura A. Bettencourt, Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer for the CDC’s Enteric Disease Epidemiology Branch

I work in a group at CDC that investigates foodborne illnesses in the United States — illnesses like salmonellosis and E. coli infection.  One challenge we face during an outbreak investigation is trying to figure out the source of the outbreak. 

When a group of people consume the same contaminated food, an outbreak of illness can occur.  This group may be people who ate a meal together or people who happened to buy and eat the same contaminated item from a grocery store or at a restaurant. 

Here’s why outbreaks can be such a mystery:

  • When people get sick from food, they often assume the cause was the last thing they ate before they started feeling ill.  That’s often not the case.  For many foodborne illnesses, it can take anywhere from several hours to several days before people start to feel sick.  The cause could have been something they ate several days ago, something they might not even remember eating. 
  • The contaminated food usually looked, smelled, and tasted perfectly fine, making it sometimes very difficult to determine exactly what made them sick.
  • If safe food production and handling practices were not followed,  the food could have become contaminated at any point, from the time the food was harvested or produced until it was eaten.
  • People who get sick with a foodborne illness don’t always see a health care provider. When they do, the providers don’t always test for bacteria that cause foodborne illness.  These test results are very important, because CDC and other groups need the results to detect outbreaks.
  • Because people are often not interviewed until weeks after they became sick, they may have trouble remembering what foods they had eaten or what spices and condiments they may have added to their food.

So, how do we figure out which foods are making people sick?  Some of the things we do are:

  • Use technologies, such as “DNA fingerprinting” of bacteria from ill people to help determine which ones might be linked to a common source of infection.
  • Interview people who have gotten sick to find out what foods they recently ate.
  • Interview people who haven’t gotten sick to compare what foods they recently ate to the sick people.
  • Study information from previous outbreaks to see which foods have often been a source before.
  • Compare the types of bacteria found in food or ingredients during the outbreak to the types found in people who are sick.

How does this affect you? One thing to remember is that only a tiny fraction of foodborne illnesses are reported as part of an outbreak.  While it’s important to keep track of food recalls to avoid getting sick, it’s equally important to follow the basic food handling rules: Clean, Cook, Separate, and Chill. And, if you suspect that you have a foodborne illness, report it to your local health department. Often calls from concerned citizens like you are how outbreaks are first detected.

Source:  foodsafety.gov

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