Salmonella Outbreak May Escalate

Salmonella outbreak may escalate

Federal health officials predicted Thursday that the outbreak of salmonella poisoning which spurred the recall of millions of eggs from one Iowa company will possibly grow, because reports of cases that occurred after mid-July have not come yet, said Dr. Christopher Braden, epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control.

Dr. Braden said that nearly 2,000 illnesses from salmonella traced to the eggs were reported between May and July. That number is roughly 1,300 more than the usual, but no deaths have been reported to the CDC by state health departments so far.

“I would anticipate that we will be seeing more illnesses reported likely as a result of this outbreak,” said Dr. Braden.

In what has become one of the largest shell egg recalls ever, an estimated 380 million eggs have been recalled from Wright County egg in Iowa.

A spokesperson for the Food and Drugs Administration said that new rules to ensure egg safety may have prevented such an outbreak of the rules have been implemented a few months earlier.

The new rules require egg producers to undergo more salmonella testing and other safety precautions. Back in July, the FDA said that the new rules can reduce the number of salmonella infections by almost 60 percent.

“There are preventive measures that would have been in place that could have prevented this,” said Sherri McGarry of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition of the FDA.

McGarry and other FDA officials refused to elaborate on specifics, adding that the agency is already conducting an investigation.

Posted by George Daniels on Friday August 20 2010, 8:26 AM EST. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0