Attribution of Foodborne Illnesses, Hospitalizations, and Deaths to Food Commodities by using Outbreak Data, United States, 1998–2008http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/3/11-1866_article.htmAbstractEach year, >9 million foodborne illnesses are estimated to be caused by major pathogens acquired in the United States. Preventing these illnesses is challenging because resources are limited and linking individual illnesses to a particular food is rarely possible except during an outbreak. We developed a method of attributing illnesses to food commodities that uses data from outbreaks associated with both simple and complex foods. Using data from outbreak-associated illnesses for 1998–2008, we estimated annual US foodborne illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths attributable to each of 17 food commodities. We attributed 46% of illnesses to produce and found that more deaths were attributed to poultry than to any other commodity. To the extent that these estimates reflect the commodities causing all foodborne illness, they indicate that efforts are particularly needed to prevent contamination of produce and poultry. Methods to incorporate data from other sources are needed to improve attribution estimates for some commodities and agents.
Despite advances in food safety, foodborne illness remains common in the United States; >9 million persons each year have a foodborne illness caused by a major pathogen (1). One challenge in preventing foodborne illness is determining how to prioritize limited food safety resources across a large number of foods (2). Furthermore, attributing all illnesses to specific foods is challenging because most agents are transmitted through a variety of foods, and linking an illness to a particular food is rarely possible except during an outbreak.
To help determine priorities for food safety efforts, we organized the large number of foods implicated in outbreaks in the United States into 17 mutually exclusive food commodities. Here, we provide estimates of the number of domestically acquired foodborne illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths attributable to these commodities.
Methods
Data SourcesState and local health departments report foodborne disease outbreaks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through the Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System (3). Reports include, when available, number of persons ill, outbreak etiology, description of the implicated food vehicle(s), lists of ingredients, and identification of the contaminated ingredient(s). We reviewed all outbreaks from 1998, the first year with detailed information on ingredients, through 2008 that were reported to the CDC by October 2010. For this analysis, we included all outbreaks with an implicated food vehicle and a single etiologic agent.
Health officials may report whether an etiologic agent was confirmed or suspected on the basis of published criteria (4,5) and the method of confirmation. Reports may include >1 of 5 reasons for implicating a food vehicle: 1) statistical evidence from an epidemiologic investigation; 2) laboratory evidence identifying the etiologic agent in the implicated food; 3) compelling or other supportive data; 4) previous experience suggesting that the food vehicle is the source; and 5) other data, such as identification of the same etiologic subtype on the farm that supplied the implicated food. We considered an implicated food confirmed when 1 of the first 2 reasons was reported. Other implicated food vehicles were considered suspect.
To determine whether to analyze outbreaks with suspect foods, we reviewed a convenience sample of 117 outbreak reports for which the reason for implication was not reported. Supporting evidence implicated the food vehicle for 65% of these reports. Some of these outbreaks involved too few persons to conduct an epidemiologic investigation; in most, no food was tested. Outbreaks with suspect vehicles constituted a large proportion of the dataset, but it was not possible to locate and review the documentation for all investigations. However, because a large percentage of documentation reviewed had reasonable evidence to implicate the reported food, we included all outbreaks with suspect foods in the analysis.
During 1998–2008, a total of 13,352 foodborne disease outbreaks, causing 271,974 illnesses, were reported in the United States (Technical Appendix 1 Table 1 [PDF - 723 KB - 8 pages]). Of those outbreaks, 4,887 (37%), causing 128,269 (47%) illnesses, had an implicated food vehicle and a single etiology; 300 of those outbreaks were excluded because information about the vehicle was insufficient to categorize the ingredients. We also did not include the 3% of outbreaks that had multiple etiologies reported.
To assess possible bias when including outbreaks with a suspected vehicle or etiology in our estimates, we compared the rank order of each of the 17 food commodities in our model based on the total number of associated illnesses with the rank order when including only those illnesses with a confirmed etiology and vehicle. The order of the top 8 commodities associated with the highest number of illnesses changed only slightly (ranks 5 and 6 switched); therefore, we included all outbreaks to maximize the data available for the lower-ranking commodities.
The estimated number of domestically acquired illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths for each etiology was obtained from published estimates (1) or, when not available, by extrapolating from available data. To highlight differences in sources for nontyphoidal Salmonella spp. serotypes, we made estimates for those most frequently isolated from humans (i.e., Enteritidis, Heidelberg, Javiana, Newport, Typhimurium) and, separately, for all others. We estimated the number of illnesses, hospitalization, and deaths by multiplying the numbers for nontyphoidal Salmonella spp. (1) by the proportion of all serotyped human Salmonella isolates reported during 1998–2008 (6).
The outbreak dataset included outbreaks with chemical etiologies and those caused by Anisakis simplex, for which published illness estimates were not available. For these, the number of illnesses was estimated as the product of the mean annual number of illnesses reported to CDC through outbreak surveillance during 1998–2008 by using the same multipliers for underdiagnosis (×25), underreporting (×30), case-hospitalization rate (×0.006), and case-fatality rate (×0.0004) as for infection with Clostridium perfringens, a short-duration illness (1).
We attempted to attribute food commodities for an estimated 9,638,301 illnesses, 57,462 hospitalizations, and 1,451 deaths caused by known agents (Technical Appendix 1 Table 2 [PDF - 723 KB - 8 pages]). We did not attribute illnesses to commodities for illnesses caused by astrovirus, Mycobacterium bovis, Toxoplasma gondii, and Vibrio vulnificus because no outbreaks were reported for these pathogens. These pathogens caused an estimated 1.1% of illnesses, 8.1% of hospitalizations, and 25.2% of deaths (a high number of deaths were estimated to be caused by toxoplasmosis [1]).
Food CategorizationWe defined 3 commodities for aquatic animals (fish, crustaceans, and mollusks), 6 for land animals (dairy, eggs, beef, game, pork, and poultry), and 8 for plants (grains-beans; oils-sugars [refined plant foods]; fruits-nuts; fungi; and leafy, root, sprout, and vine-stalk vegetables) (7). Foods were categorized into >1 of 17 mutually exclusive commodities according to ingredients listed in outbreak reports, or, when ingredients were not listed, in recipes found on the Internet (7). In some analyses, we grouped commodities (Figure 1).
We defined as simple an implicated food vehicle that contained ingredients from 1 commodity, such as apple juice (fruits-nuts commodity). This category included foods such as fruit salad that were composed of several ingredients from the same commodity. We defined as complex an implicated food vehicle that contained ingredients from >1 commodity, such as apple pie (made of ingredients from several commodities: fruits-nuts [apples], grains-beans [flour], oils-sugars [sugar], and dairy [butter]). We excluded water as an ingredient.
Estimation MethodWe calculated for each etiology the proportion of outbreak-associated illnesses transmitted by each commodity. We allocated illnesses from simple food outbreaks of a given etiology to their single implicated commodities. For each complex food outbreak, we partitioned the associated illnesses to the multiple implicated commodities in proportion to the relative numbers of illnesses in all simple food outbreaks that implicated those specific commodities; we then added the results from all outbreaks to obtain commodity illness percentages. We then applied the commodity-specific percentage of ill persons to the total estimated proportion of domestically acquired illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths for each etiology (1). Last, we added the total proportions of commodity-specific illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths for simple and complex foods for all etiologies. We considered these the most probable estimates for each commodity (Technical Appendix 2 [PDF - 723 KB - 8 pages]).
To provide a range for the most probable estimates, we determined a minimum estimate by attributing illnesses to commodities implicated only in outbreaks where illness was transmitted by simple foods and a maximum estimate by including complex food outbreaks and attributing the outbreak illnesses to each ingredient in the implicated food (Technical Appendix 1 Table 3 [PDF - 723 KB - 8 pages]). Thus, all illnesses in a complex food outbreak with 3 ingredient commodities were included 3 times, once for each commodity. The numbers provided in the Results section are the most probable estimate, unless stated otherwise. Calculations were performed in SAS version 9.3 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC, USA).
ResultsThe final dataset consisted of 4,589 outbreaks with an implicated food vehicle and a single etiologic agent (Technical Appendix 3 [PDF - 723 KB - 8 pages]; Technical Appendix 1 Table 1 [PDF - 723 KB - 8 pages]); a total of 120,321 outbreak-associated illnesses were caused by 36 agents (Technical Appendix 1 Table 2 [PDF - 723 KB - 8 pages]). Norovirus caused the most outbreaks (1,419) and outbreak-associated illnesses (41,257), far above the median for all agents (29 outbreaks, 1,208 illnesses). No outbreaks were caused by Mycobacterium bovis, Vibrio vulnificus, astrovirus, or Toxoplasma gondii. The implicated food vehicle was complex for 2,245 (49%) outbreaks (Technical Appendix 1 Table 2); the median number of commodities for complex food vehicles was 4 (range 2–13).
We applied percentages derived from outbreak-associated illnesses for each etiology to the 9.6 million estimated annual illnesses assessed and attributed ≈4.9 million (≈51%) to plant commodities, ≈4.0 million (≈42%) to land animal commodities, and ≈600,000 (≈6%) to aquatic animal commodities (Table 1). Produce commodities (fruits-nuts and the 5 vegetable commodities) accounted for 46% of illnesses; meat-poultry commodities (beef, game, pork, and poultry) accounted for 22%. Among the 17 commodities, more illnesses were associated with leafy vegetables (2.1 million [23%]) than any other commodity. The high estimate for illnesses attributable to leafy vegetables was many times higher than the low estimate (Figure 2, panel A), which indicates that leafy vegetables were frequently found in complex foods. After leafy vegetables, the commodities linked to the most illnesses were dairy (1.3 million [14%]), fruits-nuts (1.2 million [12%]), and poultry (900,000 [10%]). Norovirus comprised 57% of all illnesses.
An estimated 26,000 (46%) annual hospitalizations were attributed to land animal commodities, 24,000 (41%) to plant commodities, and 3,000 (6%) to aquatic animal commodities (Table 2). Produce commodities accounted for 38% of hospitalizations and meat-poultry commodities for 22%. Dairy accounted for the most hospitalizations (16%), followed by leafy vegetables (14%), poultry (12%), and fruits-nuts (10%) (Figure 2, panel B). Among the estimated 57,000 hospitalizations, 8% were not attributed to a pathogen, mainly because the dataset did not include data for Toxoplasma spp.
An estimated 629 (43%) deaths each year were attributed to land animal, 363 (25%) to plant, and 94 (6%) to aquatic commodities (Table 3). Meat-poultry commodities accounted for 29% of deaths and produce 23%. Among the 17 commodities, poultry accounted for the most deaths (19%), followed by dairy (10%), vine-stalk vegetables (7%), fruits-nuts (6%), and leafy vegetables (6%) (Figure 2, panel C). Of the 277 deaths attributed to poultry, most were attributed to Listeria monocytogenes (63%) or Salmonella spp. (26%). Among the 1,451 estimated deaths, 25% were not attributed to a pathogen, mainly because the dataset did not include data for Toxoplasma spp.
Most bacterial illnesses were attributed to dairy (18%), poultry (18%), and beef (13%) commodities (Table 1). Most chemical illnesses were attributed to fish (60%, most caused by the marine biotoxin ciguatoxin). Most parasitic illnesses were attributed to mollusks (33%) and fruits-nuts (29%); this reflects the fact that 1 simple food outbreak was caused by Giardia intestinalis (mollusks) and 1 by Cryptosporidium spp. (fruits-nuts). Most viral illnesses were attributed to leafy vegetables (35%), fruits-nuts (15%), and dairy (12%). Of the 20 outbreaks associated with simple foods and caused by norovirus transmitted by dairy, 14 (70%) were transmitted by cheese products.
The plant commodity group accounted for 66% of viral, 32% of bacterial, 25% of chemical, and 30% of parasitic illnesses (Table 1). This group accounted for a greater proportion of illnesses than the land or aquatic animal commodity groups for Bacillus cereus; Clostridium botulinum; enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli; Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157; non-O157 STEC; Salmonella enterica serotypes Javiana, Newport, and other (e.g., serotypes other than Javiana, Newport, Enteritidis, Heidelberg, Typhimurium, and Typhi); Shigella spp.; mycotoxins; other chemicals; Cryptosporidium spp.; Cyclospora cayetansesis; hepatitis A; norovirus; and sapovirus (Table 4). The land animal group accounted for the highest proportion of illnesses for Campylobacter spp., Clostridium perfringens, Listeria spp., Salmonella serotypes Enteritidis and Heidelberg, Streptococcus spp. group A, Yersinia enterocolitica, and Trichinella spp.
________________________
________________________
__
You can read the discussion by clicking on the link...
