CSPI Claims Fewer Complete Foodborne Outbreak Investigations Undertaken

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has issued a report that claims state health departments completed fewer foodborne outbreak investigations in 2007 than in the previous decade. The consumer watchdog found that states reported 33 percent fewer fully investigated outbreaks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2007 than in 2002. Of the nearly 1,100 outbreaks reported in 2007, only 378 cases identified both a food and the pathogen, the mark of a complete investigation.

“The decline in fully-investigated outbreaks could reflect a serious gap in state public health spending,” Caroline Smith DeWaal, the group’s food safety director, was quoted as saying in a December 23, 2009, press release. CSPI analyzed a total of 4,638 illness outbreaks linked to specific foods involving 117,136 individual illnesses between 1998 and 2007. The 10-year data analysis showed that eggs dropped out of the top five causes of outbreaks, which CSPI credited to Food and Drug Administration-mandated safety programs by egg producers. The data also indicated that dairy outbreaks increased dramatically after 2004 “due to increased availability of unpasteurized dairy
products,” according to CSPI.