By Neha MathurJun 1 2023Reviewed by Lily Ramsey, LLM In a recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report , researchers summarized environmental health data collected by the United States state and local health departments during foodborne illness outbreak investigations reported to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention via the National Environmental Assessment Reporting System between 2017 and 2019.
Thus, the CDC launched NEARS in 2014 to complement the NORS surveillance and enhance prevention efforts against foodborne illness outbreaks associated with retail food establishments, including restaurants and caterers. Identifying gaps in ill-worker policies of all retail food establishments is crucial for preventing foodborne outbreaks, where contamination of food by ill-food workers is the topmost contributing factor.
For this CDC report, 25 health departments from across the U.S. provided environmental data. It encompassed interviews with food establishment managers where outbreaks occurred and corresponding epidemiological or laboratory data from health departments. Furthermore, this report assessed whether establishments had ill worker policies in writing and specified the following:ii) reporting five symptoms of foodborne illnesses, i.e., diarrhea, vomiting, jaundice, sore throat, fever, and lesions;iv) five symptoms in a food worker that made a case for taking leave from work.
Regarding outbreak characteristics, investigations could identify an etiologic agent in 555 of 800 outbreaks. The topmost etiological agent was norovirus, followed by Salmonella, accounting for 47% and 18.6% of cases, respectively. Moreover, most establishments where outbreaks occurred engaged in riskier food preparation practices , which increased the likelihood of microbial/toxin proliferation or survival.
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