Food, animals and water National surveillance programs collect data on illnesses and test food in grocery stores
TORONTO — Nasty food poisoning bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli are under surveillance.
“Food- and water-borne illness are complex and there are lots of ways you can get them, and they require multiple surveillance approaches,” said Lisa Landry, director of enteric surveillance at the Public Health Agency of Canada.
“We are trying to understand what really causes illness.”
The good news is bacteria like E. coli 0157:H7, salmonella and campylobacter are on the decline, but when they strike, the resulting illness can be serious, she told a Canadian Meat Council symposium on food-borne illness held in Toronto Oct. 2-3.
Read Also
Rented farmland jumps 3.4 million acres in Saskatchewan and Alberta
Farmland rented or leased in the two provinces went from 25.7 million acres in 2011 to 29.1 million in 2021, says Census of Agriculture data.
FoodNet Canada, the national surveillance program, works with public health agencies across the country looking for sources of infection in food, animals and water.
Data is collected from sentinel sites in Ontario (Region of Waterloo Public Health), British Columbia (Fraser Health Authority) and Alberta (Calgary and central Alberta).
This information can help identify trends in certain pathogens and the resulting sickness in people.
Information is gathered from weekly samples of raw meat and produce at grocery stores.
Manure samples are collected from 30 farms raising beef, hogs, poultry or dairy cattle, and farm questionnaires are distributed to measure management practices and potential risk to workers.
Surface water samples are also collected at the sentinel sites.
Another agency, the Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Use and Resistance Surveillance (CIPARS), measures antibiotic use across the country and potential cases of resistance in people and livestock.
The program looks for E. coli, campylobacter and salmonella, while FoodNet looks at anything associated with enteric (intestinal) disease.
Campylobacter and salmonella are among the Top 5 culprits when it comes to disease, but surveillance indicates these and other pathogens are on the decline, said Landry.
Recalls for possible E. coli 0157:H7 contamination are well publicized, but the bacteria have been decreasing in Canada since 2010.
“We really do have a success story in the process,” she said.
“E. coli seems to have flat lined and has decreased very steadily for the last couple years.”
Surveillance teams check raw and processed chicken for salmonella and campylobacter.
Salmonella counts were down last year but for some unknown reason has increased this year.
Campylobacter has not shown up in processed, frozen chicken but is showing up on raw chicken parts.
“Campylobacter has kind of re-mained consistent in humans for a long time. It goes up and down over the years,” she said.
- no significant change in the rate of salmonella infection
- 35 percent decrease in the rate of campylobacteriosis
- 68 percent decrease in the number of O157 verotoxigenic E. coli infections
- 27 percent decrease in the rate of shigellosis
- Other major pathogens commonly transmitted through food, such as norovirus, clostridium perfringens or toxoplasma gondii, are not tracked because they cause mild symptoms of short duration and because of current limitations in laboratory capacity and techniques.
