The latest updates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding the outbreak of cyclosporiasis, the illness that results in watery diarrhea, nausea and dehydration, explain that the source of the outbreak has still not been determined.
As of July 13, 1,645 cases have been confirmed by the CDC, with another 5,100 reported cases requiring further investigation.
“It’s really important we understand right now, is this one outbreak? Is it multiple outbreaks? How did these outbreaks happen? Because that’s the only way we’re going to prevent them going forward,” said Barbara Kowalcyk, director of the Institute of Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.
But Kowalcyk said there are a host of issues challenging the ability of the nation’s food safety system to pin down the source of the current outbreak.
“This outbreak is also a symptom of potential system vulnerabilities,” she said. ”We know that foodborne disease is a serious public health issue. We have 48 million Americans sickened each year, resulting in 128,000 hospitalizations and about 3,000 deaths.”
The CDC’s food safety budget is about $74 million a year, with half going to states, according to Kowalcyk.
Citing the difficulty of pinning down the source of the current outbreak that the CDC says has spread across 34 states, Craig Hedberg, professor of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota said, “We may well have multiple different things going on simultaneously, and that complicates our search for a common source as well.”
“If the cases in Ohio and Michigan are different from the source of the cases in Texas, then trying to find a common source between the two is not going to lead to anything productive at all,” Hedberg said.
Washing produce not ‘terribly effective’
During the virtual conference call, Donald Schaffner, professor of food science at Rutgers University, said the reports that recommended washing produce before eating it caused him to roll his eyes. Referring to the parasite, cyclospora, Schaffner said, “Washing is not a terribly effective intervention for any pathogens that are associated with fresh produce. So telling people to wash their produce may be feel-good, but it’s not really doing anything to really manage risk for people.”
The lag between the reporting of confirmed cases at the CDC compared to the reported cases at the state level has added to some confusion on the part of the public, according to Sarah Sorscher with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. That lag coupled with the fact that the exact food or water source of the current outbreaks are unconfirmed leave consumers with “no way to eliminate that pathogen on the fresh produce that they have other than by cooking it.”
But referring to CDC personnel, Sorscher added, “You would actually be hard pressed to identify a team of people who is smarter, who is more skilled and experienced, and more committed to their work than the men and women who are working right now on solving this outbreak.”
Asked why it appears the number of confirmed cases seems to have been on a steady upward trajectory over the past 10 years, Hedberg said there are “culture-independent diagnostic testing” methods using panels that can screen for nearly 20 different pathogens at the same time.
“These panels are much more widely used today than they were say, 10 years ago, so we have much better ability to pick up these infections at the clinical level than we used to have,” Hedberg said.
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