Part of the issue, public health experts say, is that food-borne illnesses are not only spreading further and faster new pathogens are emerging and some strains are becoming harder to control. “The number of bacteria you're required to ingest to establish an infection of salmonella might be up to a thousand cells, but if those cells are in a high-fat or high-sugar food like chocolate, then you might need only 10 to 100 to contract an infection,” Kirk says.įood-borne illness and public health security is a growing problem worldwide, with developing countries bearing the brunt of the burden. At the other end of the supermarket aisle, high-fat and high-sugar foods can enhance bacterial survival by protecting bacterial cells from stomach acid. However, its not just improperly prepared fresh produce that poses a risk. Fresh produce has increasingly been implicated in food poisoning outbreaks – most notably in the US but also in Australia – as health-conscious consumers increasingly favour salads, raw vegetables and minimally processed foods with lower salt and fat contents.
This same principle applies to any food preparation that drops the bacterial "kill step" of cooking. The rate of hospitalisation has also increased, from 4 per cent in 2001 to 10 per cent in 2011. In 2011, 150 outbreaks affecting 2241 people were recorded, compared to 86 outbreaks affecting 1768 people in 2001. In the decade to 2011, the number of Australians affected by food-borne gastroenteritis increased 79 per cent, according to figures from OzFoodNet, the national food-borne disease monitoring network. The number of Australians struck down by food poisoning has leapt almost 80 per cent in the past decade and the number of outbreaks linked to restaurants has more than doubled, according to the latest government statistics.Īs investigators grapple to find the cause behind what is potentially the largest outbreak of salmonella poisoning the ACT has ever seen, experts warn that changing diets, demographics and an increasingly globalised food supply will continue to present challenges to public health security systems. Not so fresh: Food poisoning has been increasingly traced back to fresh produce.
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