Thread: Causes of food diseases escape officials

Causes of food diseases escape officials

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national ... -1919r.htm

By Thomas Hargrove
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
November 24, 2006

More than 50,000 people got sick or died from something they ate in a five-year period -- a hidden epidemic that went undiagnosed by the nation's public-health departments.

Americans play a sort of food-poisoning Russian roulette depending on where they live, an investigation by Scripps Howard News Service found. Slovenly restaurants, disease-infested food-processing plants and other sources of infectious illness go undetected across the country -- but much more frequently in some states than others.

Scripps studied 6,374 food-related disease outbreaks reported by every state to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from Jan. 1, 2000, through Dec. 31, 2004. The causes of nearly two-thirds of the outbreaks in that period were officially listed as "unknown."

The findings translate into an alarming potential for danger. If health officials are unable to connect illness to food, victims who might eat from the same poisoned source cannot be warned. If food is known as the culprit, but the specific disease lurking within is not diagnosed, the victims might get even sicker or die without proper treatment.

Families of children who got sick during the five-year period in the study tell heart-rending stories of the heroic efforts they made to convince the medical establishment they were victims of food illness.

"My daughter's death would have been listed just as a 'stroke' and swept under the rug," said Todd Nelson, a Continental Airlines pilot and father of a 19-month-old girl who died of E. coli. "But I wanted to know what my daughter really died of. And I wanted somebody to blame."

The Nelson family thinks Ana Leigh Nelson ate infected hamburger meat from a popular Minnesota restaurant in 2002. The family demanded private tests that confirmed a rare strain of E. coli and then demanded that the medical examiner change her death certificate to report death from complications of food poisoning.

"We sort of fell through the cracks," Mr. Nelson said.

The study found that Kentucky, Oklahoma and Nebraska are virtually blind to outbreaks of food sickness, rarely detecting that scattered illnesses have common food causes.

In Alabama, Florida and New Jersey, the cause of food poisoning is almost never found, even when dozens or hundreds of people became violently ill or died from something they ate, according to the Scripps study.

The CDC defines an "outbreak" as two or more people who got sick or died after eating the same food. State and local epidemiologists are diagnosing an average of just 36 percent of the nation's reported outbreaks even though some outbreaks have hundreds of victims.

Alabama was the worst in the nation, diagnosing only 5 percent of its reported outbreaks, the study found.

"It's a real struggle. We've never identified a virus at the state level," Alabama state epidemiologist John Lofgren said.

The study found that health departments are more likely to make a diagnosis when a very large number of people get sick. They failed to determine the cause in 31 percent of the outbreaks that sickened 50 people or more. But the failure rate increases rapidly with smaller groups.

Fifty-three percent of outbreaks affecting 10 to 49 people went undiagnosed, while 75 percent of outbreaks that sickened nine or fewer people were listed as "unknown"causes.

Several state and local epidemiologists said large outbreaks give them more chances to isolate the exact disease involved. More victims mean a better chance of obtaining blood, stool and urine samples that can be tested for pathogens.

But epidemiologists concede that failures to diagnose food illness are common, even when the only suspect for outbreaks of a widespread intestinal disease is food. The Scripps study found that the disease went undiagnosed in 4,054 of the 6,374 reported outbreaks. Those unknown causes sickened or killed 50,968 persons.

"We did what we could do," said Lisa Dallmeyer, epidemiologist for Peoria, Ill., after extensive local and federal lab tests failed to discover why 95 public-school children started vomiting after eating lunches served in December 2005 and January 2006.

Miss Dallmeyer said it "doesn't surprise me" that Illinois is diagnosing the cause of only 27 percent of its outbreaks.

Every year, an estimated 5,000 Americans die from food-based diseases such as salmonella, E. coli, shigellosis and campylobacter. Another 325,000 people are hospitalized. The CDC estimates that food-based sickness probably afflicts 76 million Americans annually.

Although the Scripps study found that the quality of the nation's network of public-health departments varies, there were some bright spots.

Wisconsin, Minnesota and Hawaii do a good job of diagnosing disease outbreaks.

Wisconsin came out on top in the study by diagnosing the cause of 90 percent of its food-poisoning cases. Wisconsin also was the first state to detect and report September's deadly E. coli outbreak from infected raw spinach grown in California and shipped nationwide. The outbreak killed at least three persons and sickened at least 199 others.

But the study found little to celebrate overall, because most outbreaks go undiagnosed.

Federal officials and public-health specialists agreed with the findings and conclusions of the Scripps study.

"Our surveillance systems were designed to ring a bell when there is a problem. Are they perfect? Absolutely not. Could they be better? Absolutely yes," said spokesman Tom Skinner at the CDC's Atlanta headquarters after reviewing some of the study's findings. "We've already come a long way, but certainly we can do better than this."

Mr. Skinner offered no explanation when asked why the CDC didn't warn underperforming states and local health departments.

"The CDC, like most government agencies, is pretty conservative. Why would they want to rock the boat?" said Ewen Todd, director of the Food Safety Policy Center at Michigan State University. "It takes someone who is independent to say: 'This is crazy.' "

They must be really incompetent to figure it out. We have people picking our food and preparing our food who are ill themselves and/or have very poor hygiene habits. There was an article in todays paper about a study on the health of migrant workers. They didn't say whether they were legal or not to be politically correct but if you have one more brain cell than an ape, you can figure it out.
I thought that when legals got jobs handling food, you needed to have a physical to make sure that you did not carry any contagious diseases. Also in most cities people who handle food must wear gloves for that reason.
I have seen illegals who used to work cleaning at my condo complex pick up trash including items that fell out of ripped bags with their bare hands. It was unbelievable! They could easily pick up a disease and not get treatment and pass it on to us.