According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a foodborne illness outbreak occurs when two or more people become sick with the same illness from the consumption of the same food. While the CDC coordinates the investigation of multistate foodborne illness outbreaks, state and regional/local public health surveillance provide the essential information for their investigation.
The process of investigating a foodborne illness outbreak begins with the detection of it. The detection of a foodborne illness outbreak depends on the information collected and provided by different state and local health surveillance agencies’ methods, employing PulseNet, formal reports of illnesses, and informal reports of illnesses. Once an outbreak is detected, a traceback investigation begins, in which three different types of information—epidemiological, traceback, and food and environmental testing—are collected to determine the source of the outbreak.
The collection of this information is done through the state, local, and territorial public health departments and then reported to the CDC. Next, a team within the CDC, referred to as the Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System (FDOSS), collects the information regarding the ongoing foodborne illness outbreak. The CDC uses this information to conduct a traceback investigation, including the date and location of the onset of the outbreak, the number of sick persons involved in the outbreak, their symptoms, the pathogen responsible for the illness, the food or drink that was the carrier for the pathogen, and the environment in which the food or drink was prepared and eaten. At this point, the three sources of information—epidemiological, traceback, and food and environmental testing—are analyzed to determine a likely source of the outbreak.
Throughout the process of a traceback investigation of a foodborne illness outbreak, the state and local/regional public health surveillance departments play an important role in providing information to the FDOSS and enabling the CDC to coordinate the analysis and reach a conclusion regarding the origin of the outbreak. To learn more about the process of foodborne illness outbreak detection and investigation and the role that your state and local public health departments play in this process, visit the CDC’s website.
https://www.cdc.gov/fdoss/index.html
https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/outbreaks/surveillance-reporting/index.html
https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/outbreaks/investigating-outbreaks/investigations/index.html
