Outbreak fading fast - Date of onset

From the CDC:

The outbreak can be visually described with a chart showing the number of persons who became ill each day. This chart is called an epidemic curve or epi curve. The epi curve and information about interpreting it may be found here. It shows that the number of persons who became ill peaked during May and decreased in June. The average number of persons who became ill between May 20 and June 10 was 33 per day. The average number of persons who became ill between June 11 and June 20 was 19 per day. Illnesses that occurred after June 20 may not yet be reported due to the time it takes between when a person becomes ill and when the illness is reported. This takes an average of 2-3 weeks. The outbreak appears to be ongoing, but with fewer new illnesses each day. Please see the Salmonella Outbreak Investigations: Timeline for Reporting Cases for more details.

TK: What does this information mean? From the Food Safe Group, Robert LaBudde said this:


CDC has given the outbreak curve, which now allows some conclusions to be reached:
http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/saintpaul/epidemic_curve.html
1. Cause of the outbreak stopped feeding into the distribution system around the end of May. The growth was exponential from April through May, which suggests much more than simple contamination of a few lots. Some type of feed back may have been present.
2. Cases since then are due to capacitance of the distribution system, and discharging this capacitance is still underway, but is nearly over.
Because the source and amplification of the outbreak was disconnected at the end of May, any investigations (e.g., sample and test) by CDC and FDA after that point would be fruitless.
However, there would have been a useful purpose in examining product already in distribution (e.g., warehouses, storage at restaurants, etc.)
It would be interesting to know what happened at the end of May to terminate the propagation mechanism. Presumably it had something to do with the CDC investigation and fixation on tomatoes.
So CDC appears to have done the job, even if it did so in partial ignorance.
Of course, we may never know how the outbreak came about in the first place, as the trail is now cold.

================================================================ Robert A. LaBudde, PhD, PAS, Dpl. ACAFS e-mail: r...@lcfltd.com Least Cost Formulations, Ltd. URL: http://lcfltd.com/ 824 Timberlake Drive Tel: 757-467-0954 Virginia Beach, VA 23464-3239 Fax: 757-467-2947

New E. coli treatment?

Check out this story from Science Daily about, well, here is an excerpt:

The antimicrobial treatment involves the use of submicroscopic agents that are unable to reproduce or grow outside bacterial host cells. The purified viral agents are called bacteriophages, which means "bacteria eater," and they can wreak havoc on deadly bacteria, such as E. coli 157:H7, that sicken consumers.
The bacteriophage research is being conducted by microbiologist Manan Sharma, with the ARS Food Safety Laboratory, in Beltsville, Md., in collaboration with researchers at Intralytix, Inc., based in Baltimore, Md.


TK: Bottom line, the trials showed the treatments could be effective in killing E. coli on produce. Just don't ask me to pronounce "bacteriophages."

More on the blog poll question

Still 18 hours to vote on the blog poll question, and I think it will already set the record for participation. In any case, the question was admittedly imperfect, and I have come to see more of its flaws revealed in the discourse of the question on a couple of discussion boards. From the Food Safe Group:

Professor Frank Hartman wrote:

I believe we are missing the true problem. Every refrigerated container carries a massive number and variety of pathogens, Take three perti dishes and place them in any truck container for food or plants. the entire refrigerated container system is contaminated.

http://www.zp-research-group.com/FoodBornePathogens-1.html

More on trucks from Roy Costa:

This is very true. Transport is a missing link and we are involved in a risk assessment study now to define the parameters for safe transport. Should be published in the Federal Regitrar this fall or early winter.Roy E Costa,



TK: On the question of consumer "blame," from Robert LaBudde:

Attempts to blame FBI illness on consumer behavior are typically pure conjecture. And there is no scientific evidence to support these conjectures, except a feeling that "it must be true".
Having said this, there are situations and pathogens where consumer (and restaurant) behavior plays a key role. Backyard barbeques and E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef are an obvious example. In this case, however, the extreme carefulness to avoid cross-contamination and to provide proper cooking are an unrealistic expectation (implied by FSIS' rules) for consumer behavior.


TK: The result of the poll is perhaps incidental to the discussion of the problem, but if you are keeping score at home, the poll tally at about 9 pm central on Sunday night: "Consumers" top the vote as the "most to blame" with 39% of the vote.