Foodborne Illness and Outbreak Management

Government, industry and the consumer all have an interest in food safety.  Food and food preparation and consumption have been associated with many illnesses and outbreaks in Ontario; however, the exact number of cases attributed to food-borne illnesses and outbreaks is difficult to determine and often that information is not available. This leads to some very important questions:

• What are the most common causes of food-borne illness?
• How do we go about improving our food safety efforts and surveillance techniques?
• Are our current prevention methods sufficient?

Current information does not lend itself to answering some of these questions. Internationally, other jurisdictions have tried to address some of these issues. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States has introduced a number of programs and initiatives in an attempt to answer the question of the status of food-borne illnesses in the U.S. The CDC has implemented networking and surveillance initiatives and provided additional resources to fill in the gaps, particularly where there is a lack of regulatory requirement for reporting. In the specific case of Minnesota, the American state has demonstrated strong leadership in enteric surveillance and outbreak management. What methods do its experts use that make it a leader in the field?
In this presentation, we will review some of the CDC’s and Minnesota’s methods and strategies and invite questions and comments from participants regarding the potential applicability of these approaches in Ontario. 

Presenter: Dr. Dean Middleton

Dr. Dean Middleton is a veterinary epidemiologist whose primary areas of interest are enteric and zoonotic diseases. Dr. Middleton joined Public Health Ontario in 2009, after having worked at MOHLTC for ten years. During this time, he managed approximately 40–50 provincial-level enteric outbreaks annually that ranged from the Walkerton E. coli outbreak in 2000 to the Maple Leaf Listeria outbreak in 2008. He continues to have an interest in enteric disease and, in particular, Salmonella Enteritidis.

Presenter: Alison Samuel
Alison has over fifteen years of experience working in public health and currently works as a senior program consultant in PHO’s Environmental and Occupational Health program area. Prior to working at PHO, she spent eight years with the Public Health Division of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) in the same role. She has worked as a public health inspector in several boards of health and as a food scientist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). She has also served as a board examiner for the Canadian Institute of Public Health Inspectors (CIPHI) certification process.