I didn't write a blog post yesterday because I have been so busy with a sister blog Food Safety Chat. First we has the Salmonella Saintpaul incident in the US that started in April this year. The traffic on the internet has gone very quiet on the incident however the latest report from the CDC states that 1405 people have been positively identified as having been infected with Salmonella Saintpaul with the same genetic fingerprint in 43 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada.
In Denmark there has been a food safety outbreak associated with Salmonella Typhimurium U292 where at least 400 people have been linked to the bacterial infection. There have been 114 confirmed cases of Salmonella Enteriditis PT12 in England and Wales over the last few months and the source is still to be formally identified.
Then there is the current Salmonella Agona outbreak in Ireland and the UK that has been linked to cooked meat products produced in Ireland.
Today there is the Salmonella recall associated with Bovril.
In the UK the cost of food poisoning and food-borne disease is largely underwritten by the National Health Service. In 2000, the Food Standards Agency put the cost to the NHS and business at £79 per case or £350 million per year with the cost of Campylobacter and Salmonella associated illness estimated at £110 million a year. In 2006 the FSA issued data that put the estimated cost of food borne disease in England and Wales 2005 at £1.4 billion. For those interested in US statistics follow the link to an ERS-USDA paper from September 1996 - quite sobering reading. In Oct 2005 the WHO gave an estimated cost in the US of $7 million per annum. This demonstrates the staggering ongoing economic impact of food borne disease as well as the personal impact too which can often be significant and long term.
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