The Canadians were busy today, when most of them are off at the cottage.
The Public Health Agency of Canada has joined with the U.S. and now estimates that each year about 1 in 8 Canadians (4 million people) get sick from the food they eat (used to be 1-in-3, or 1-in4).
Four pathogens cause about 90% of the 1.6 million illnesses caused by known pathogens: Norovirus (1 million cases), Clostridium perfringens (177,000 cases), Campylobacter (145,000 cases) and nontyphoidal Salmonella (88,000 cases). These estimates are based on multiple complementary disease surveillance systems and the peer-reviewed literature.
Understanding the burden of foodborne illness is useful for decision-makers, supporting the development of food safety and public health interventions, for research and for consumer education. Future efforts will focus on estimating the number of foodborne hospitalizations and deaths, the economic cost of food-borne illness and the burden of water-borne illness in order to provide crucial information to support research, policy and action.
A guidance document, Weight of Evidence: Factors to Consider for Appropriate and Timely Action in a Foodborne Illness Outbreak Investigation was developed to assist federal government decision-makers weigh the scientific evidence collected during a foodborne illness outbreak investigation in order to inform risk mitigation actions.
The objective of the document is to provide guidance on how to weigh evidence collected during epidemiologic, laboratory and food safety investigations in a food-borne illness outbreak investigation, as part of an overall health risk assessment process carried out by Health Canada. This is a short summary of the document.
And, to highlight the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Foodborne Illness Outbreak Response Protocol (FIORP), the primary guidance document for investigations of multi-jurisdictional food-borne illness outbreaks in Canada.
Approach: The current version of the FIORP was developed in 2010 by the Public Health Agency of Canada following consultation with Health Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and provincial and territorial stakeholders.
Results: The FIORP outlines guiding principles and operating procedures to enhance collaboration and coordination among multiple investigative partners in response to multi-jurisdictional food-borne illness outbreaks. It has provided guidance for the conduct of 22 such investigations led by the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Centre for Food-borne, Environmental and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases between 2011 and 2013. Furthermore, it has also served as a guide for the development of provincial protocols.
Conclusion: The timely and effective investigation of and response to multi-jurisdictional food-borne illness outbreaks in Canada is facilitated and enhanced by the FIORP.
Of course, none of these documents were peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals, so it’s just a lot of back-slapping.