The first rule of public health is, make public health look good.

That’s what I was told by a senior health type after the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in Walkerton, Ontario in 2000 that killed seven and sickened 2,500 in a town of 5,000 (it’s in Canada).

This isn’t cynicism, it’s just something that has been repeated to me by front-line types for the past 20 years.

The European Food Safety Authority is doing some (belated) cleanup and after the E. coli O104 outbreak in sprouts last year that killed 53 and sickened 4,400.

In anything but a rapid response to a crisis, EFSA has written a report that has lots of notes about all the meetings they had, but has nothing about what they did for all those sick and dead people. Nor does it address widespread criticism at the time of the outbreak that health types were far too slow to pinpoint the source and respond.

To hammer home their role of inadequacy, EFSA published a companion piece, Risk communication: Making it clear, timely and relevant, with catchy soundbites like, “By communicating on risks in an open and transparent way based on the advice of its scientific expert panels, EFSA contributes to improving food safety in Europe and to building public confidence in the way risk is assessed. … To this end, in the last 10 years, EFSA has commissioned two Eurobarometer surveys on risk perception in the EU. The findings of the reports show that most Europeans view national and European food safety agencies as reliable sources of information on possible risks associated with food. The surveys have proved invaluable in guiding and informing EFSA’s communications.

Organizations can survey all they want to bolster their own self-opinions around the water cooler. Didn’t help contain a ridiculously large outbreak.