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Technology Vs. E.coli Outbreaks
jcatcw writes "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found the patterns of illness in both of the recent E. coli outbreaks — packaged spinach and Taco Bell — using PulseNet, which uses a customized version of BioNumerics to conduct comparisons and analysis of samples in a SQL Server database. PulseNet holds the DNA fingerprints provided by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). It operates at a national level and can link small, localized cases in a nationwide pattern. 'We can now see the connections you would not have seen before, which has revolutionized the world of food safety,' according to John Besser, clinical laboratory manager at the Minnesota Department of Health and a member of the Association of Public Health Laboratories."
If people are still getting sick.
Seems it would take a while for the DNA to grow enough to supply fingerprints.
DNA replicates pretty quickly. What would be cool is if one day in the future, everyone who goes to the doctor to get treated for a virus then gets the virus quickly fingerprinted, so that way the pattern of spread of the virus among the population can be monitored.
They will do an plugin for Google Earth?
It makes sense to spend our efforts trying to eradicate these strains in the domestic and wild animal populations. Otherwise, we run the risk of every farmer's field and every outdoor trail becoming a serious health hazard.
So while the epidemiologic effort to trace the source of the human outbreak is impressive, I think research into controlling it in animals is even more important.
Seriously, while mildly interesting, I don't think that business intelligence software is front-page-worthy.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
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How would us Americans maintain our fat asses without Taco Bell and the mega transfat combo value menu?
Come to think of it, maybe an outbreak of serious illness every once in a while would be a good thing... horrible diarrhea is a very aggressive weight loss program.
Ok, back to my heart-attack-in-a-sack.
FairTax baby!
A guy on tv said,"Who is shitting in the spinach!". The other guy said, "No one is shitting on the spinach, it is the fertilizer that is the source of the outbreak". To which the man replied, "O.K., Who's shitting in the fertilizer!". I laughed my ass off
and they didn't say 'shitting', they said 'pooping'. HARD CORE.
http://www.dattaway.org/jesus_christ_taco_bell_cle an_that_mess_up.jpg
The database is nice but it would be nicer if we'd simply apply what we already know to prevent the outbreaks in the first place. There's nothing new about composting and how to do it safely, yet we see big commercial farms rush the job and spray immature and dissease causing crap on food stuffs that will be eaten raw. I'm not sure if this is a problem of economies of scale or lax enforcement of existing laws. I am sure that the problem needs to be fixed in a way that won't discriminate against small operators who have never had the problem to begin with.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
from the new WiFi equiped Taco Bell here in town, but I really have to goooooo!!
is food irradiation.
You don't need complex insights into the food chain and fast reaction time, if you kill the E. Coli, Salmonella, Listeria and Shigella at the source. Most likely any contamination would be from food preparation at home or in a restaurant.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I cannot speak for the September spinach outbreak, but i can for the Taco Bell incident. Any credit given to a government application should go to NJ's CDRS system and Middlesex County's Public Health Dept. Specifically to Stephanie Brown, a health investigator who works for Middlesex LINCS. Nearly a month before the CDC had their "confirmed" cases and prior to when the story broke CNN's front page, Middlesex County doctors and nurses diagnosed nearly a dozen of "probable" E.Coli cases in the area. The moment the first case was entered, Mrs. Brown's Blackberry buzzed with a notification from CDRSS that E.Coli existed as it did with every case thereafter. Her investigations almost immediately pinpointed Taco Bell as the culprit and her results added to the cases in CDRSS. For the map lovers, from this, CDRSS generated super-terrific maps of NJ on the fly showing the source and resulting case addresses connected by beautiful dotted lines which still hang on my cubicle wall.
I am one of a team of seven who created CDRSS and I am very proud of it. However, policy and red tape prevents the system from realizing it's full potential. In dealing with health issues, I believe that erring on the side of caution is a must. I understand the problem with shutting a place down because of one guy that ate there and got sick. However, when three people get sick from a nasty food born illness, all of them socially unrelated, the only known link between them (i.e taco bell) should be temporarily shutdown and investigated as a precaution. Especially if the location in question is a restaurant as opposed to a food store. However, state and local health departments do not (and cannot) do this. Unfortunately the only people who can (FDA/CDC) are primarily concerned with issues revolving around the macro-level, and consequently this takes way too long to happen. I was on conference calls where higher-ups within NJ's DOH pleaded with Yum! executives to close specific locations when the first cases pointed to Taco Bell. Nearly a month passed before Lab results made their way back through CDRSS and up to the CDC so they could put their big red "CONFIRMED" stamp on these original cases. During that time dozens of other "probable" cases began to surface in multiple states. Needless to say, Yum! execs quickly did a 180 in the conference calls following.
revolutionized the world of food safety
I think what he meant to say was, "the EXCITING world of food safety"
The ILoveYou computer virus infected cut roses across the country on Valentine's Day. Experts predict a huge baby boom in time for Christmas.
e Coli is so 1990s.
i Coli will be announced by Jobs next month.
The spinach contamination a few months ago was traced to a field about 30 miles from where I live. The speculation is that some wild pigs (boars) were snacking on some spinach in the field and and an infected pig took a dump. It's probably not the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last. Shit happens.
I think a bigger problem is how so much clean spinach was destroyed as a result. The pig probably ruined a few heads of spinach. Those few heads got mixed in with a bunch of clean spinach as the spinach was pre-packaged. So that one pig's dump killed more people than would have died a few years ago if they had eaten head spinach. We could irradiate the packaged produce to clean the spinach further than its current 3 wash cycle but some people won't eat irradiated food. Even still, there's probably a variety of bug out there that would survive x-raying. If you eat spinach from a head of spinach, you run the risk of not cleaning it sufficiently as well as dealing with the multiple number of hands that have touched it between the field and your mouth. Never mind intentional contamination like the Tylenol killer came up with or the zealots in Oregon who contaminated a salad bar so voter turnout would be low.
In short, there's no way to guarantee that every piece of food that goes into your mouth is benign. With techniques such as the one described in the article, we'll hear of more people dying from contaminated food than we otherwise would have. People will panic, food will be destroyed, lawyers will sue and we'll plod along eating slightly more expensive food as a result. Will we be any better off? Probably not.
In fact, we may be worse off. As people demand more safety, government power will grow. We won't be safer, but the government will be larger which means we'll all be the poorer.
If our FDA had not reduced so many inspectors -- perhaps this would never have become an "outbreak." At the very least the "Penny wise, Pound foolish" nature of our current Administration has almost allowed the Spinach industry to be ruined.
... but eventually, everyone will have fear fatigue, and will be sick of this "do it yourself, dummy" mentality, because we don't have time enough in the day to figure out everything. I can't research the prescription I'm about to take, or the school my kids attend, AND test for mercury in my soda. This is nuts.
10 years ago, would it have taken a month to find the "source?" I remember little outbreaks like this in the past, and by the next day, we'd know what to avoid. We just heard "don't eat spinach." So, every salad bar, every grocery store, every restaurant dumped tons of spinach, and in two months I see products that are labeled "spinach free." The fear, uncertainty and doubt just ruined the market.
This is what awaits all American industries, if they keep lobbying Government for less oversight. If people can't trust their water, food, or air, or that Ford won't produce a car that doesn't explode on impact -- US industry is doomed. We will only trust imported goods, from countries with standards, American products will rightfully get banned and then we will have another trade war that makes the Beef scuffle of a few years ago seem very small.
Standards are important to maintain -- they don't pay off immediately, but they do pay off. Industry being allowed to pollute, or to skip food inspections, will inevitably bankrupt those industries. You save a bit now, only to lose your consumer base.
For a while, you can sell Lead testing kits, and anti-E-coli sprays
So... I'm very happy they have a new forensic tool -- but it doesn't replace having enough FDA inspectors to ensure quality at all of these food packers.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Excuse me but, you've not revolutionized food safety until you can prevent these outbreaks. So far you're still operating in 20/20 hindsight mode of "Now we know what happened."
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When the plaintiff's lawyers get the information you just dropped, you'll see changes in the law and in business practices. If Yum! was notified and did *nothing*, well.....they are gonna be paying quite a hefty sum down the road when they lose in court and the shareholders are going to be out for blood and the local pols will be getting an earful. That's my guess anyway.
Good work, BTW.
- Non-therapuetic antibiotics used as growth enhancers - increases risk of antibiotic resistent pathogens for everyone, not just beef eaters.
- Feed "enhanced" with rendered carcases (cannabalistic cows) - causes mad cow disease. Outlawed most places, but feed companies can cheat or make mistakes.
- Corn feeding - gives cows highly acid stomachs, making the natural E-Coli deadly to humans. This not only affects beef, but nearby fruits and vegetables exposed to manure. Apples have been infected by flies carrying germs from nearby manure.
The market for "green" beef seems to be rather small. Range feed beef is not as tender and marbled as corn-fed, penned up, growth enhanced beef. It is healthier, however.