Why Recent Food Poisoning Outbreaks All Began in This One State
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State by state, health teams are working together to lock down potential outbreaks — and Minnesota does serve as one of the nation’s “canaries in the coal mine,” according to Matthew Wise, a team lead in the Outbreak Response and Prevention Branch, which is a part of the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Most outbreak investigations are multistate investigations, where a lot of people are working together to contain it,” Wise tells Yahoo Health. “But Minnesota has always had a strong state health department and has been great with outbreak response, conducting really thorough investigations.”
Wise says the reason Minnesota finds foodborne illness quicker than other states is twofold: the best technology and in-depth interviews. “It can often be hard to determine if outbreaks are connected or just happening simultaneously,” he explains. “For instance, the type of salmonella from the chicken poisonings was salmonella enteritidis, which is very common. The DNA fingerprint is very common — and that makes it hard to know whether outbreaks are connected or not.”
But Minnesota is equipped to take bacterial analysis a step further. “The state does extra DNA imprinting to determine which strains may be coming from a common source,” Wise says. “They’re one of the labs doing whole DNA genome sequencing, which is basically extra characterization of the DNA.”
On top of the state’s advanced lab work, Wise says, they’re also incredibly thorough and quick on the interview front — which is a long and careful process of locating a poisoning’s source.
Here’s what happens: A person goes to the doctor or hospital with a gastrointestinal issue, and they often leave a stool sample. That stool sample is analyzed for foodborne illnesses like salmonella, among other things. If a doctor is seeing an unusual prevalence or infection, or perhaps multiple people that attended the same event come down with an illness, the lab at the state health department is notified. The information is then sent to the CDC to identify illness clusters, and the agency launches an investigation if a potential outbreak is suspected.
https://www.yahoo.com/health/why-do-so-many-foodborne-illness-outbreaks-begin-124925339332.html
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