The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), is getting in on the vibrio outbreak linked to crab meat imported from Venezuela – often posing as Maryland crab – along with state and local health officials, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

CDC recommends that consumers not eat, restaurants not serve, and retailers not sell fresh crab meat imported from Venezuela at this time.

How would consumers know? Ask questions?

Consumers are not the critical control point of this food safety system.

Yet my 9-year-old knew enough to ask if the aioli that was served with her chips at a hockey tournament in Newcastle, Australia, this was weekend, contained raw egg.

I wasn’t around, but a shiver of pride went through my body.

This type of product may be labeled as fresh or precooked. It’s commonly found in plastic containers.

Food contaminated with Vibrio parahaemolyticus usually looks, smells, and tastes normal.

Steamed crab meat from blue crab (close up)

If you buy crab meat and do not know whether it is from Venezuela, do not eat, serve, or sell it. Throw it away.

CDC, state and local health officials, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are investigating a multistate outbreak of Vibrio parahaemolyticus infections linked to eating fresh crab meat imported from Venezuela.

Epidemiologic evidence indicates that precooked fresh crab meat imported from Venezuela is the likely source of this outbreak.

Twelve people infected with Vibrio parahaemolyticus who ate fresh crab meat have been reported from Maryland, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia.

Four people (33%) have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.

Illnesses started on dates ranging from April 1, 2018 to July 3, 2018.