Public health agencies' quick identification and response to this summer's numerous foodborne illness outbreaks highlights the technological advances over the last ten years that help protect consumers, according to NPR.
Here are three things to know:
1. The test used to diagnosis this summer's Cyclospora outbreak linked to McDonald's salads did not earn FDA approval until 2014. Earlier Cyclospora tests were more complicated and less reliable. Clinicians had to suspect the parasite was the cause of an outbreak and specifically order a test for it, which often required visual inspection of stool samples, sometimes multiple times. Today, tests results are available within one to two hours.
2. Along with better pathogen testing, detecting outbreaks has also improved. For example, scientists can use genome sequencing to identify a direct match between samples from sickened individuals and the bacteria causing the foodborne illness.
"The advantage of whole genome sequencing is that it gives us a lot more information when we're trying to tell whether an organism we isolate from a food is the same exact [organism] that we isolate from the individuals who became ill," Edward Dudley, PhD, associate professor of food science at University Park-based Pennsylvania State University, told NPR.
3. While the advancement of food technology allows health officials to catch bacteria that would have slipped through the cracks just years before, the recent increase in outbreaks highlights how our food supply chain still poses risks to consumers.
"You can't question that this year's been a, sort of, bumper year. We've had a lot of outbreaks that have been detected and investigated," Matt Wise, a member of the CDC's outbreak response and prevention branch, told NPR. "So, we'll have to wait and see whether this becomes a new normal, or whether this just happened to be a blip on the radar."