There is unanimous consensus that insects are important vectors of foodborne pathogens. However, linking insects as vectors of the pathogen causing a particular foodborne illness outbreak has been challenging. This is because insects are not being aseptically collected as part of an environmental sampling program during foodborne outbreak investigations and because there is not a standardized m...

BACKGROUND On 7 and 11 July 2007, health officials in Texas and Indiana, respectively, reported 4 possible cases of type A foodborne botulism to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Foodborne botulism is a rare and sometimes fatal illness caused by consuming foods containing botulinum neurotoxin. METHODS Investigators reviewed patients' medical charts and food histories. Clinica...

Foodborne agents cause an estimated 76 million illnesses annually in the United States. Outbreak surveillance provides insights into the causes of foodborne illness, types of implicated foods, and settings of foodborne infections that can be used in food safety strategies to prevent and control foodborne disease. CDC collects data on foodborne disease outbreaks submitted from all states and ter...

Enteric infections Outbreaks of foodborne disease Sixteen outbreaks of gastrointestinal disease thought to be due to consumption of contaminated food were reported in July and August 2011. One outbreak was identified through surveillance of laboratory notifications, 14 outbreaks were identified through complaints to the NSW Food Authority and one outbreak through the local public health unit. N...

In this issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Sivapalasingam et al. [1] describe an elegant epidemiologic investigation of a mul-tistate outbreak of Salmonella enterica se-rotype Newport infection associated with mango consumption. The details of this investigation highlight a number of important issues demonstrating the substantial impact of recent changes in food processing and distribution ...

The proportion of US food that is imported is increasing; most seafood and half of fruits are imported. We identified a small but increasing number of foodborne disease outbreaks associated with imported foods, most commonly fish and produce. New outbreak investigation tools and federal regulatory authority are key to maintaining food safety.

We know how the hepatitis A virus (HAV) is spread, but foodborne enteric viruses remain a difficult problem to control. An outbreak affecting 153 schoolchildren and staff in Michigan this spring emphasizes the need for continued vigilance. The frozen strawberries implicated in this outbreak were grown in Mexico and then packaged in a California plant before being distributed to schools (1). The...

Restaurants are important settings for foodborne disease transmission. The Environmental Health Specialists Network (EHS-Net) was established to identify underlying factors contributing to disease outbreaks and to translate those findings into improved prevention efforts. From June 2002 through June 2003, EHS-Net conducted systematic environmental evaluations in 22 restaurants in which outbreak...

International foodborne norovirus outbreaks can be difficult to recognize when using standard outbreak investigation methods. In a novel approach, we provide step-wise selection criteria to identify clusters of outbreaks that may involve an internationally distributed common foodborne source. After computerized linking of epidemiologic data to aligned sequences, we retrospectively identified 10...