Food Protection Trends - August 2010 - 485

FIGURE 1. Regional reports by quarters, 2008
Regional Reports by Quarters 2008
Africa 60 50 Number of reports 40 30 20 10 0 1st Quarter 2nd Quarter 3rd Quarter 4th Quarter Seasons 33 27 25 21 35 30 51 Europe Western Pacific

38 28 20

FIGURE 2. Reported vehicles by quarters, 2008

food and water, animal disease reports (limited to key food sources), plant disease reports, food safety studies, and food safety policies. The data collection was organized by subject matter and world regions. The researchers adopted WHO’s geographic division of national governments into seven world regions (19): The Western Pacific Region (37 countries), the South East Asian Region (11 countries), the Eastern Mediterranean Region (24 countries), the African Region (46 countries), the European Region (52 countries), the Central and South Amer-

ican Region (28 countries), and the North American Region (3 countries). Because the researchers were situated in, and focus extensively on the food safety issues and policies in, the North American region, that region was not included in this study in order to neutralize any North American bias of the results. The data were compiled from webbased sources, including news articles, scientific publications, and announcements from international organizations and government entities. Only documents written in or translated to English

were included in the 2008 database. For several regions (Latin America, Middle East and Southeast Asia), the small number of reports found led the researchers to conclude that data collection in multiple languages was essential to assess the burden of disease. Therefore, those regions were not included in this analysis. Tests were conducted in French and Mandarin to determine the number of reports that might be captured using these additional languages. The tests involved one region (Africa) and several countries in the Western Pacific Region, mainly China. The data were obtained by using internet data gathering tools such as Google Alerts, and by consulting news listservs such as ProMED-mail, an emerging diseases monitoring program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, and FS-Net, developed by Professor Doug Powell at Kansas State University, which provide current food safety news. Information specific to one country or one region was also provided directly by the SFI member consumer organizations in different regions. These reports were included if they were supported by a reliable source of information (consumer organizations contributed a small number of reports, less than one percent). Each report was assessed to determine whether it represented a new outbreak or provided updated information for an outbreak already reported in the database. Documents related to the same story were grouped together and counted as a single entry. For each report included in the database, the following information was recorded: The original source, the date, and the hyperlink to the webpage where the report was originally published. The reports were listed in the database chronologically and were sorted by categories and geographical location. As with other studies of the burden of foodborne diseases, the outbreaks included in the SFI database represented only a small proportion of the actual disease outbreaks and illnesses related to food or water. The vast majority of foodborne illnesses are sporadic, and as a result they are not identified as an outbreak. In addition, many foodborne illness outbreaks are underreported, because of a number of factors, including their small size or long incubation period, geographic dispersion and location, lack of access to or use of medical care, and lack of a functioning surveillance system.

AUGUST 2010 | FOOD PROTECTION TRENDS

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Food Protection Trends - August 2010

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