Outbreak Investigations Help Everyone Make Food Safer: CDC Vital Signs: November 3, 2015

Details

• Corporate Authors:
  National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (U.S.). Division of Cancer Prevention and Control.
• Description:
  1. Food produced at company A’s factory gets contaminated and is distributed to grocery stores nationwide. ; 2. John buys the food and uses his store loyalty card when he checks out. ; 3. A few days after eating the food, John gets diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps. ; 4. John goes to his doctor, who collects a stool sample to test for germs. ; 5. The clinical lab finds the Salmonella germ and sends a sample of it to the state public health lab for further testing. ; 6. The state public health lab identifies the DNA fingerprint of the Salmonella germ from John and enters the results into the PulseNet database. ; 7. CDC’s PulseNet finds people in other states who got sick from Salmonella with the same DNA fingerprint. ; 8A. CDC contacts state health departments and starts a multistate outbreak investigation. Food regulators (FDA or USDA) trace suspect foods back to the source. ; 8B. The public health department interviews John about what he ate before getting sick and asks to use his store loyalty card to see what he bought. ; 9. Interview results, store loyalty card data, source tracing and food tests show that many sick people ate a food from company A before getting sick. ; 10. After discussing with public health officials and regulators, company A issues a recall and fixes the source of contamination. ; 11. Future illnesses and outbreaks are prevented when food regulators and companies that produce similar products improve practices based on company A’s experience. ; SOURCE: CDC Vital Signs, November 2015.
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• Subjects:
  • Disease Outbreaks
  • Foodborne Diseases
• Series:
  Vital Signs
• Document Type:
  Still Image
• Genre:
  Infographic
• Pages in Document:
  1 infographic
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/35571/cdc_35571_DS1.jpeg
• File Type:
  [JPEG - 268.36 KB]
• Collection(s):
  Stephen B. Thacker CDC Library
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:a67d7e560838675e4ee0e719d59b20fa5fd19826780f19ce612d4c3f8a62e73a3e43162e174224bfd65768d41cdcd9905d3edff71a45c249de7a05bdfb97d21a