Posted on by

Salmonella Posioning Won’t Go Away

9 Replies

Sources of Salmonella Poisoning

The CDC has just published a report on food safety, zooming in on Salmonella. In the past 15 years, the government and food industry have NOT been able to reduce the number of incidents of poisoning from this germ. Compare that to a 50% reduction in e-Coli infections.

Some stats:

1. Each year, roughly 1 in 6 people in the US gets sick from eating contaminated food.

2. Each year, 1 million people get sick from eating food contaminated with Salmonella.

3. Salmonella poisoning is directly responsible for  $365 million in direct medical costs annually.

4. In 2010, 54% of the total hospitalizations and 43% of the total deaths related to food safety were caused by Salmonella.

This is the CDC’s explanation of why Salmonella is such a challenge:

  • It is found in many different types of foods: meats, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and even processed foods such as peanut butter.
  • Contamination can occur anywhere: from fields where food is grown to cutting boards in kitchens.
  • What we eat and how we eat have changed: foods coming from one central location are widely distributed, meaning that sickness can spread quickly; we eat more meals outside the home; and more foods and ingredients come from all over the world.
  • Some policies and procedures that can make a difference in reducing contamination take years to put into place.

The government is trying to implement more policies from “farm to fork”, but so far they don’t seem to be working for Salmonella infections.

What you should do to keep safe:

1. Separate. Keep raw meat, poultry, and seafood separate from ready-to-eat foods. This requires frequently washing your hands and dishes while working in the kitchen to cook up a meal.

2. Cook. Use a food thermometer to ensure that foods are cooked to a safe internal temperature: 145°F for whole meats (allowing the meat to rest for 3 minutes before carving or consuming), 160°F for ground meats, and 165°F for all poultry. Most people don’t realize that pultry has to be heated the MOST!

3.Chill. Keep your refrigerator below 40°F and refrigerate food that will spoil.

4. Step aside. Don’t prepare food for others if you have diarrhea or vomiting.

Get Fooducated: iPhone App Android App RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate on facebook: facebook.com/fooducate

Get Fooducated

Download APP

Subscribe

Follow

  • RJ

    My sister and I had it from milk one time and we thought our heads were going to blow up when the pain got to be so severe not to mention other nasty side effects! The next day they had a recall on the milk from Jewel.  You can’t tell if the grocery stores let something set out or had poor refrigeration.  Once in this lifetime was enough. Restaurants have to be more careful with their workers.  Recently at a restaurant I saw a girl make my sandwich, and then she took a clients money, and then I saw her cough into her hand.  My sandwich was thrown away.  I think we need to warn people about wearing gloves in this industry and keep your germs off of my food, or I will stay home and not support your business.

  • JHS

    I had it in 1990. I had gone to a HS basketball game with friends and then out to Burger King afterward. While everyone else had burgers and fries, I had mini muffins. A day later, in the middle of classes, it hit me. I was a wreck. My baby brother then picked it up from me. After a day or so of violent symptoms and no end in sight, my parents called the dr., and after providing a sample discovered it was salmonella. One of my friends who was there also came down with it; we helped drs triangulate where the cases were coming from. It hung on for a week, if I remember correctly, and required an entire box of Immodium to get it to a manageable state. I spent the Thanksgiving holiday sipping Gatorade and trying not to get so dehydrated that I would need medical care.

    About five years later, I picked some sort of food-borne illness from Subway, from one of their hot subs. As a newly-graduated college kid without insurance, I didn’t contact my dr. to confirm a specific pathogen, but it felt exactly the same as the salmonella, and took the same course.

    And then, on vacation to New Orleans with my husband about a decade later, we picked something up the final night. We had dinner out at a French Quarter restaurant; I had a pasta dish, he had some alligator dish (gumbo, perhaps). It hit me first, when we were out on Bourbon Street many hours later, him a few hours after me. The next morning we were barely able to get to a local shop to get Immodium, and were hard-pressed to get to the airport that afternoon for our flights. Food illness in plane restrooms is its own kind of hell. Again, no diagnosis since we were traveling, but it presented itself the same way as the salmonella, with symptoms slamming into you with such violence after a short incubation period (for me, the first two were about twelve hours, the last one about six), and then completely incapacitating you for several days. There is no way to accurately describe the misery.

    For me, it has painted quite the vivid picture of how widespread and near-unavoidable food-born illness is in our current lifestyle. From fastfood to upscale restaurants; from pre-packaged processed to more freshly-prepared; bakery to meat; if we eat out, we are running the risk of catching something, every time. The frightening thing for me is that even with how agonizing my cases were, they weren’t severe enough to hospitalize me; I can’t imagine the cases that were. But also, aside from my first case which was reported by my dr., the other cases were unreported. It’s frightening to think of how many cases there are such as mine, which won’t ever make it into the stats. So the numbers we see, while staggering, still don’t encapsulate just how pernicious this problem truly is.

  • FrugalArugula

    Personally, I assume everything is contaminated in some way until heat or appropriate washing has occurred. And my hands need some serious TLC after meals with multiple meats for sure.

    It’s nice to think that what the consumer is doing at home is what causes food poisoning, but taking steps to insure that you’re bringing safe food into your house to begin with is also very important.

    I’d like to add things to your “What you should do to keep safe”:
    5. Buy from the farmers at the farmers market. It’s much less likely that these items are from factory farming situations where widespread contamination occurs, though it does still happen. Safe cooking and refrigeration practices should still be used.

    6. Don’t buy factory ground meat at all. Some grocery stores do it in-house (Whole Foods for sure) or you can buy whole pieces and grind it in a food processor or home grinder. Be sure give it a rinse first. Knowing what is in your ground meat is an excellent way to keep from getting sick.

    Just my two cents.

    • CT

      Don’t rinse meat, especially poultry, it’s scientifically documented that this practice can actually cross-contaminate your kitchen up to three feet around the sink

  • http://evilcyber.com Evilcyber

     It is no wonder that neither goverment or food industry were able to stem the tide, if less and less people know how cooking is done, let alone proper food hygiene.

  • http://www.thefrugaldietitian.com Nancy – The Frugal dietitian

    Interesting recall yesterday on Bratz make up http://thefrugaldietitian.com/?p=21788

  • CT

    It’s about time Fooducate did a post on food safety… even though this one isn’t as thorough as one would hope, it’s certainly a start

  • concerned consumer

    Comment for RJ who threw the sandwich away, tell the clerk!  I stopped at a organic
    bread shop, the clerk did the same thing, picked up my bread, mechanically sliced it,
    picked it up with his hands then put it in a bag he then took my money.  I told him. I did not get the bread he handled, but another that was not sliced.  Tell them out loud
    so other people can hear. It only takes once (hopefully) for them to learn.  Shame on the owner not to have instructed the employees.  I also get ploughshares, which cuts down the incidents of salmonella, the farmers family picks the organically grown vegetables and fruit. 
    Thank you for all your information.

  • Ergonomic Chair Producer

    Very informative! Salmonella contamination of foods is indeed a great challenge for us. We must be informed on how to properly handle and prepare food in order to reduce salmonella infection.