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Canadian officials are on alert for a possible food-poisoning outbreak after dozens of people in at least nine U.S. states fell sick with the same salmonella infection.
Many of the illnesses have occurred in Texas and New Mexico, where health officials have determined that raw tomatoes contaminated with salmonella caused people to become sick. They are warning people to avoid certain types of tomatoes that have been implicated in the outbreak. Health authorities in seven other states are working to determine if salmonella illnesses reported there are also linked to raw tomatoes, fuelling fears the outbreak could spread.
Although it's still unknown where the contaminated tomatoes came from, or whether they are being sold in Canada, officials say they haven't received reports of illness here.
But news of widespread food-poisoning outbreaks and bacterial contamination have become a familiar refrain in North America in recent years. In 2006, hundreds of people fell ill and some died after eating spinach that was tainted with E. coli bacteria. That same year, a Toronto couple were paralyzed after drinking carrot juice that was contaminated with a botulism toxin. In March, Canadian health officials had to launch a major recall of cantaloupe tainted with salmonella after dozens became ill in Canada and the United States.
U.S. officials have determined that raw tomatoes are the culprit in a salmonella outbreak concentrated in Texas and New Mexico.
Fresh produce has always been vulnerable to bacterial contamination, in part because it's grown outside and may come into contact with animals in the field or contaminated fertilizer, or be tainted by unsanitary handling.
Those weaknesses have been amplified in the past few decades by the explosion of industrial-sized farms and the proliferation of dominant companies who supply a large portion of the product available on store shelves. Those changes mean that instead of being confined to one area, contaminated products may be spread across the continent very quickly. In addition, it is often difficult for companies and health officials to determine the source of the outbreak and where the product was distributed, meaning that more consumers may be put at risk because the contaminated goods could remain on sale longer.
"There's quite a lot of produce that moves back and forth across borders. There's quite a large volume and many producers," said Garfield Balsom, a recall specialist with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
"The trace-back information is fairly complicated and involves doing food histories on people who are sick."
The issue of food traceability - knowing the current location of a product as well as where it came from and who handled it along the way - is one of the key elements to responding effectively to food contamination and preventing the spread of an outbreak. However, even though the food system has evolved into a global entity, officials have not developed effective systems to track the movement of food and minimize the damage of potential contamination, said Sylvain Charlebois, a marketing professor at the University of Regina.
"In some cases, being able to quickly and easily recall an item can actually save lives," said Prof. Charlebois, who specializes in food distribution and safety. "You're selling these products to consumers. You want to make sure the risks are contained as quickly as possible. Food traceability is a must."
In the wake of the spinach E. coli outbreak in 2006, health officials in Canada and the United States said they would work to improve farm safety programs and look at other ways of reducing future public health problems involving tainted food.
But Prof. Charlebois said some of those efforts may not be as effective as they could be without a strong system that can quickly tell health officials exactly where a particular product was grown and where it travelled before reaching store shelves.
Mr. Balsom said Canadian officials are monitoring the current outbreak involving raw tomatoes by remaining in contact with their U.S. counterparts. Once those health officials determine the source of the tomatoes, Canadian officials will know if the contaminated product was also distributed here.
But those time lags can be one of the major factors that can exacerbate outbreaks of food-borne illness and cause the problem to be much worse than it would have been with a proper traceability program in place, Prof. Charlebois said.
