@Risk

The food industry is contending with yet another recall of contaminated food.

This time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is collaborating with public health officials in many states, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the State of Rhode Island to investigate a multistate outbreak of a particular strain of Salmonella.

Since July 1, 2009, 207 individuals from 42 states and District of Columbia have been sickened with this Salmonella strain, and preliminary analysis of this study has suggested salami as a possible source of illness. As a result, Daniele International Inc., an establishment with operations in Pascoag and Mapleville, R.I., recalled approximately 1,240,000 pounds of ready-to-eat (RTE) varieties of Italian sausage products. Specifically, the FDA is actively investigating the supply chain of the black pepper used in the manufacturing of the recalled meat products.

The CDC has identified three interesting and unique features of this outbreak:

• Because the outbreak strain of Salmonella Montevideo is the most common pattern for serotype Montevideo based on DNA analysis, detecting an outbreak is challenging. CDC developed and tested a new statistical method for figuring out whether the cases reported to the PulseNet database were above what was expected based on historical trends.

• Shopper card information was successfully used for the first time to determine specific brands of a product suspected to cause illness. Additionally, a case-control study was conducted which suggested that the individuals who became ill ate salami/salame products a week prior to becoming ill.

• The recalled product contains ingredients regulated by two different federal agencies, USDA and FDA, both of which are fully engaged in this investigation. USDA regulates the meat used in the salami/salame and FDA regulates the black pepper.

While some aspects of this new outbreak may be unique, at its core, this incident is the same as recent others –all of which clearly signal that more needs to be done to mitigate risks and improve traceability  in the nation’s food supply chain.