The Growing Problem of Food Poisoning
(Source: Probiotics Nature's Internal Healers by Natasha Trenev)
Food poisoning is often mistaken for the flu. You have undoubtedly experienced a mild case yourself—few of us escape it. However, headlines of serious outbreaks are becoming more frequent and universal. It seems that almost every day we read or hear of a problem with food poisoning in some area of the world, with more and more of these episodes occurring in the United States.

In 1985, over 17,000 people in Illinois were poisoned by Salmonella typhimurium, and 14 died. The source of this food poisoning epidemic was contaminated milk. It was discovered that during the bottling process, contaminated raw milk had been mixed accidentally with milk that had already been pasteurized.

In the United States, the largest outbreak of food poisoning recorded to date occurred in 1994, when 3.4 million people in forty different states ate ice cream that was contaminated with salmonella from unpasteurized eggs. The ice cream itself hadn't been made with unpasteurized eggs, but the tanker truck that transported the ice cream premix to the manufacturer had previously contained unpasteurized liquid eggs that had been contaminated with salmonella. The tankers were supposed to have been thoroughly cleaned before they were filled with the ice cream premix, but inspectors found that several tankers had not been cleaned adequately. They also discovered cracks in the lining of at least five of the trucks.

According to the New England journal of Medicine, of the 3.4 million people who ate the contaminated ice cream, 224,000 of them suffered from salmonella enteriditis, a form of food poisoning that causes fever, chills, and bloody diarrhea.

Do you take mayonnaise-dressed salads to a picnic or a potluck meal? Be aware that they must be kept cold—under 40^oF. In 1975, at a community picnic, 139 people fell ill after eating contaminated potato salad. The cause was Haemolytic streptococcus, confirmed by throat cultures of sixty-three of the sick picnickers.

Another member of the streptococcus family—a gastrointestinal bacteria called enterococcus—has been raising havoc recently. Most enterococci are harmless, but one particular strain has begun to mutate out of the reach of every drug, even vancomycin—the "biggest gun" in the antibiotic arsenal that, until recently, was considered the never-fail antibiotic. Because of its resistance to vancomycin, this harmful strain of enterococci has been named VRE, which stands for vancomycin-resistant enterococcus.

VRE is usually found in contaminated microscopic fecal matter. The bacteria spreads easily because of its ability to live for days on surfaces like kitchen countertops. Those most at risk of VRE poisoning are the very young, the very old, the very ill, and those with compromised immune systems. This is why patients in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and nursing homes face a greater risk of VRE than most others.

In February 1994, an outbreak of VRE in Los Angeles sickened thirty-one people. Within six months, half of them were dead. Every state in the nation has reported cases of VRE, but the majority have been found in the northeastern United States. Nonetheless, this is a coast-to-coast problem. Hospitals in New York and California have confirmed treating VRE outbreaks involving dozens of patients.

In Massachusetts in 1983, forty-nine people were hospitalized with septicemia (blood poisoning) or meningitis (an infection of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord). Fourteen of the patients died. The root cause of both of these diseases was traced to Listeria monocytogenes, which was found in a particular brand of milk. At the same time, another incident occurred in Connecticut, and the same milk source was at fault. After a thorough investigation, it was discovered that the dairy cows that provided this milk had had mastitis and were infected with Listeria. The puzzling question was how the Listeria survived the pasteurization process, which had been done properly according to the investigators.

Recently, a number of outbreaks of Listeria food poisoning have been linked to pasteurized cheeses, and various studies have also identified this bacteria in pasteurized nonfat milk and cottage cheese. It seems frighteningly clear that standard pasteurization procedures are not capable of destroying the Listeria bacteria. This is very worrisome in light of the fact that, in some tests, as much as 12 percent of all raw milk in the United States has been found to be contaminated with Listeria bacteria.

The spring and summer of 1996 saw an outbreak of food poisoning that reportedly sickened more than 1,000 people in eleven different states. Cyclospora, an intestinal microorganism that causes intense diarrhea, weight loss, and extreme fatigue, was identified as the source. Although raspberries and strawberries were investigated as possible sources, the tests were inconclusive. Identifying the source of contamination is difficult because Cyclospora has an incubation period of seven days, and often several more days pass before the case is reported. By then, according to the CDC, memories are hazy and trying to track the course of the disease is difficult. The long incubation period and delays in arriving at the correct diagnosis have complicated the problem. Many labs do not test for Cyclospora, and workers are not adequately trained to detect it.

The deadly E. coli strain 0157:H7 kills about 400 people, every year and sickens another 20,000. In 1993, an episode of food poisoning occurred in the Pacific Northwest that sickened upwards of 500 people and caused the death of several children. The outbreak was traced to undercooked fast-food hamburgers, but the initial source of the infected meat was never identified. According to C.T. Foreman, former Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, a single frozen hamburger patty can contain meat from dozens of animals, and some of the meat is likely to have come from meat producers in several different countries. In a case like this one, it is impossible to track down the true source of the contamination.

This same lethal E. coli strain has also sickened thousands of Japanese. All told, 9,412 cases of 0157:H7 were documented in Japan in 1996 and 1997. As of this writing, 319 of these people remain hospitalized, and eleven deaths have been recorded. Although radish sprouts were targeted as a likely cause of this bacterial contamination, even the most thorough testing has not implicated the sprouts as the source. The investigation is continuing.

The Federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA) claims that anywhere from 20,000 to 60,000 cases of food poisoning caused by tainted fish and shellfish occur every year in the United States. Shellfish are the culprits in more than 65 percent of all cases of food poisoning caused by seafood. Since May 1993, sixteen cases of infection by the bacteria Vibrio vulnificus have been documented in the Southwest. Raw oysters were the cause in each case. Half of those people infected with the bacteria died as a result.

A long-term examination of our use of pesticides, antibiotics, and other chemicals, and their connections to the spread of newly evolved deadly bacterial strains needs to be heightened and accelerated. The use of probiotics in soil, water, animals, and humans needs to be implemented. Stricter inspection standards are definitely in order to help protect consumers against tainted food products. Luckily, some governmental actions have been taken that will, hopefully, at least begin to eradicate this frightening problem.

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