Food Borne Illness PDF

Food Borne Illness While most foodborne illness cases go unreported to health departments, and are thus of unknown origin, the CDC estimates that 9.4 million of the illnesses are caused by 31 known foodborne pathogens, and that 90% of all illnesses due to known pathogens are caused by seven pathoge...

Food Borne Illness While most foodborne illness cases go unreported to health departments, and are thus of unknown origin, the CDC estimates that 9.4 million of the illnesses are caused by 31 known foodborne pathogens, and that 90% of all illnesses due to known pathogens are caused by seven pathogens: Salmonella, norovirus, Campylobacter, Toxoplasma, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria and Clostridium perfringens. What is foodborne illness and what are the symptoms? Foodborne illness, also known as food poisoning, can be caused by a variety of microbes such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites. Harmful toxins or chemicals present in food also may cause foodborne illness. Different causes of food poisoning cause different symptoms, so there is no one syndrome that is foodborne illness; however, common symptoms include abdominal cramping, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting, fever, headache, fatigue, and body aches. What is foodborne illness and what are the symptoms? Generally, after contaminated food is consumed there is a delay before food poisoning symptoms start. This delay is called the “incubation period”. The incubation period of a foodborne illness can range from less than an hour (which is rare) to days or weeks, and depends on the organism causing the illness and the amount ingested. This means that the last foods consumed before symptoms start are not always the source of a person’s illness. What is the difference between a bacterial foodborne illness and a viral one? While bacterial and viral infections often share the same symptoms, they are two very different types of pathogens. A bacterium is a single- celled organism that which causes illness when ingested. Unlike viruses, bacteria can grow on the food they contaminate. Most foodborne illnesses come from bacteria. A virus is non-living, and is usually spread from person to person. While some antibiotics may be used to treat bacterial infections, they are ineffective with viral ones. What is Listeria and how does it cause food poisoning? Listeria (pronounced liss-STEER-ē-uh) is a gram-positive rod-shaped bacterium that can grow under either anaerobic (without oxygen) or aerobic (with oxygen) conditions. These bacteria multiply best at 86-98.6 degrees F (30-37 degrees C), but also multiply better than all other bacteria at refrigerator temperatures, something that allows temperature to be used as a means of differentiating Listeria from other contaminating bacteria. Listeria is a common presence in nature, found widely in such places as water, soil, infected animals, human and animal feces, raw and treated sewage, leafy vegetables, effluent from poultry and meat processing facilities, decaying corn and soybeans, improperly fermented silage, and raw (unpasteurized) milk. Foods commonly identified as sources of Listeria infection include improperly pasteurized fluid milk, cheeses (particularly soft-ripened varieties, such as traditional Mexican cheeses, Camembert and ricotta), ice cream, raw vegetables, fermented raw- meat sausages, raw and cooked poultry, and cooked, ready-to-eat (RTE) sliced meats— often referred to as “deli meats”. The prevalence of Listeria in ready-to-eat meats has not proven difficult to explain The centralized production of prepared ready-to-eat food products…increases the risk of higher levels of contamination, since it requires that foods be stored for long periods at refrigerated temperatures that favour the growth of Listeria. During the preparation, transportation and storage of prepared foods, the organism can multiply to reach a threshold needed to cause infection.