IFSAC Publishes Report on Foodborne Illness Source Attribution Estimates for 2017

The Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC), which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS), published foodborne illness source attribution estimates for 2017 for Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157, Listeria monocytogenes, and Campylobacter.

The following is a summary of the results:

“We identified 3,728 outbreaks that occurred from 1998 through 2017 and that were confirmed or suspected to be caused by Salmonella, E. coli O157, Listeria, or Campylobacter. Of these, we excluded 152 outbreaks with multiple confirmed or suspected etiologies. We further excluded 1,420 outbreaks without a confirmed or suspected implicated food, 824 outbreaks for which he food vehicle could not be assigned to one of the 17 food categories, and three had occurred in a U.S. territory."

“The resulting dataset included 1,329 outbreaks in which he confirmed or suspected implicated food or foods could be assigned to a single food category: 811 caused or suspected to be caused by Salmonella, 242 by E. coli O157, 40 by Listeria, and 236 by Campylobacter. Due to down-weighting, the last five years of outbreaks provide the majority of information for the estimates; outbreaks from 2013 through 2017 provide 72% of model-estimated illnesses used to calculate attribution for Salmonella, 62% for E. coli O157, 79% for Listeria, and 58% for Campylobacter.”