With enough on our plates already (Freshway lettuce, salmonella sprouts, petition on non-O157 E. coli, etc.), we don’t report too much on international food poisoning and food safety events . . . with a few exceptions of course (e.g. listeria in Canada and China food safety). But since global markets have global consequences, it’s good to know what’s going on elsewhere too.
Registering on Barfblog recently was a Salmonella outbreak in France linked to dry sausage.
The institute for sanitary surveillance is now investigating an outbreak of salmonellosis from Salmonella 4,12 :i :-, in collaboration with the concerned partners: the National Center for Salmonella Reference, The Laboratory for studies and research on food quality and processing from the French Food Safety Agency (AFSSA), the General Management of Health, and the General Management of Food. As of May 28, 2010, 88 cases of salmonellosis tied to this outbreak have been identified, of which 46 women and 42 men, aged from 1 to 89 years old (median age 8 years old). These cases are from 49 departments in France (Figure 1, below, left).
Forty-four cases have been investigated to date. Among these, 18 people have been hospitalized and have since returned home.
For the investigated cases, the symptoms appeared between March 15 and May 9, 2010.
The questioning of patients about the food they consumed during the 7 days preceding their illness showed a high frequency of consumption of dry sausage bought from the same brand.
Of course, this outbreak hits close to home because of the recent Salmonella newport and montevideo outbreak linked to sausage manufactured by Daniele Inc., and red and black pepper from Mincing Overseas and Wholesome Spice companies. The Daniele, Mincing, and Wholesome outbreak ultimately caused 272 confirmed cases of foodpoisoning–i.e. Salmonella infection, sickening people from July 2009 through April 2010. The outbreak resulted in a widespread recall of salami and pepper products.
No word yet as to the specific cause of the French outbreak, and it appears, using a little epidemiological logic, that the outbreak only concerns sausage products from one company, rather than there being a problem with one of the sausages’ constituent ingredients, like in the Daniele, Mincing, and Wholesome outbreak.
A traceback showed that these sausages came from the same batch produced in a single firm in France, distributed nationally during the first two weeks of March 2010. The best by date for this batch extends from June 1 to 15, 2010.