Poor personal hygiene, food preparation causes | Many people don’t see a doctor unless they are ‘almost dying,’ says biologist
TORONTO — Every year, one out of every eight Canadians gets food poisoning.
However, many cases are not reported because few people get sick enough to go to the doctor.
“If you have a very mild case, you are less likely to seek medical care and less likely to submit samples,” said epidemiologist Kate Thomas with the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Food borne illness in Canada was discussed at a two day Canadian Meat Council symposium held in Toronto Oct. 3-4.
Seven major culprits are responsible for most of the sickness.
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They are norovirus, salmonella, campylobacter, toxoplasma, E. coli O157:H7, listeria and clostridium perfringens.
Norovirus accounts for 58 percent of all illnesses.
“Many of the pathogens that we now recognize as being major, a few decades ago we didn’t even consider them to be human pathogens,” said Eva Pip of the University of Winnipeg biology department.
“Now, we sure know differently,” she said.
Still, the public assumes food is safe.
Even though disease prevalence is low, people are still getting sick. Few go to the doctor and if they do, doctors may be reluctant to order too many tests because of the cost. Rural areas and northern regions may not have local physicians to treat patients with food related illness.
“When you get sick, you tough it out as best you can, unless you are almost dying,” Pip said.
Misdiagnosis is also a problem because many doctors have not been taught about the complicated ways these illnesses present themselves, she said. The patient may have a gastrointestinal upset or a respiratory infection.
Canada probably has about four million cases per year where 1.6 million are related to known bacteria, viruses or parasites. The rest are linked to unspecified agents.
According to Robert Hoekstra of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, food borne illnesses are in decline in Canada and the U.S.
In 2011, the U.S. estimated 48 million cases with 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.
“Our food is very safe and so is yours, and that is a good thing. If we go back (in history), entire villages were swathed with illness,” he said.
Jeremy Adler of Ecolab, a private company that validates food safety systems, said food borne infections are easy to catch, even though many could be controlled with good sanitation and proper handling.
The centre for disease control has studied contributing factors and blame most cases on poor personal hygiene, improper handling and poor sanitization of equipment.
Neglecting to store and cook foods to the proper temperature is a common problem. Failure to do something as simple as wash hands or cool down foods quickly has caused some serious illness, said Adler.
Poor personal hygiene can spread norovirus. Some regions require ill workers to stay home for up to 72 hours after their symptoms disappear. This can be hard to implement because many are hourly workers and they are reluctant to lose pay, said Adler.
However, a sick restaurant worker who did not wash his hands properly contaminated lettuce and about 100 people came down with norovirus.
People can get listeriosis if they eat an uncooked wiener or improperly produced deli meats.
Inadequate cooking of beef can lead to sickness from E. coli O157:H7.
Mechanically tenderized beef using needles to pierce meat is five times riskier than intact beef. The needles spread the infection from the surface to the internal areas.
A new food safety law in the U.S. is requiring mechanically tenderized beef be labelled, along with proper cooking instructions.
