Technology Vs. E.coli Outbreaks 45
jcatcw writes "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found the patterns of illness in both of the recent E. coli outbreaks — packaged spinach and Taco Bell — using PulseNet, which uses a customized version of BioNumerics to conduct comparisons and analysis of samples in a SQL Server database. PulseNet holds the DNA fingerprints provided by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). It operates at a national level and can link small, localized cases in a nationwide pattern. 'We can now see the connections you would not have seen before, which has revolutionized the world of food safety,' according to John Besser, clinical laboratory manager at the Minnesota Department of Health and a member of the Association of Public Health Laboratories."
Not so revolutionary (Score:2, Funny)
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Re:Not so revolutionary (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no way to stop the spread of a disease directly with a database, but this system was fast and accurate enough to track down the source before the outbreak became something more like an epidemic. Taco Bell is so popular that this could have added up to hundreds of thousands of cases before someone realized the source.
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Close Taco Bell (Score:2)
Come to think of it, maybe an outbreak of serious illness every once in a while would be a good thing... horrible diarrhea is a very aggressive weight loss program.
Ok, back to my heart-attack-in-a-sack.
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Sounds pretty slow. (Score:3, Funny)
Monitor Spreading Viruses (Score:2)
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Doc: You got terribliomax contagiatitis, a very contagious disease. We have quarantine everyone you had contact with. Did you have contact with anyone?
Patient: I shook hands with your receptionist.
Doc: She will get it.
Patient: Before that I bought a newspaper and gave the boy some cash.
Doc: He will get it too.
[snip out the long story and cutting to the chase]
Patient: Before that I kissed my wife before leaving for work.
Doc: Shit! I am going to get it too.
This is wha
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Re:Sounds pretty slow. (Score:5, Informative)
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Great! (Score:2, Funny)
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Control it at the source (Score:5, Interesting)
It makes sense to spend our efforts trying to eradicate these strains in the domestic and wild animal populations. Otherwise, we run the risk of every farmer's field and every outdoor trail becoming a serious health hazard.
So while the epidemiologic effort to trace the source of the human outbreak is impressive, I think research into controlling it in animals [ufl.edu] is even more important.
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Green beef (Score:2)
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Grass is too expensive, just give the cows Tums!
On a more serious note, after reading The Omnivore's Dillemma [amazon.com], I started buying grass-fed meat at Whole Foods. Personally, I find the beef tough; but the pork is to die for!
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Business Intelligence is revolutionary? (Score:1)
Attack the problem at the source (Score:5, Funny)
Why does it always have to be taco bell? (Score:2)
Tech Wonders! (Score:3, Interesting)
The database is nice but it would be nicer if we'd simply apply what we already know to prevent the outbreaks in the first place. There's nothing new about composting and how to do it safely, yet we see big commercial farms rush the job and spray immature and dissease causing crap on food stuffs that will be eaten raw. I'm not sure if this is a problem of economies of scale or lax enforcement of existing laws. I am sure that the problem needs to be fixed in a way that won't discriminate against small operators who have never had the problem to begin with.
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Of course the simple solution (Score:2)
You don't need complex insights into the food chain and fast reaction time, if you kill the E. Coli, Salmonella, Listeria and Shigella at the source. Most likely any contamination would be from food preparation at home or in a restaurant.
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typo (Score:3, Funny)
I think what he meant to say was, "the EXCITING world of food safety"
How will we handle the information? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think a bigger problem is how so much clean spinach was destroyed as a result. The pig probably ruined a few heads of spinach. Those few heads got mixed in with a bunch of clean spinach as the spinach was pre-packaged. So that one pig's dump killed more people than would have died a few years ago if they had eaten head spinach. We could irradiate the packaged produce to clean the spinach further than its current 3 wash cycle but some people won't eat irradiated food. Even still, there's probably a variety of bug out there that would survive x-raying. If you eat spinach from a head of spinach, you run the risk of not cleaning it sufficiently as well as dealing with the multiple number of hands that have touched it between the field and your mouth. Never mind intentional contamination like the Tylenol killer came up with or the zealots in Oregon who contaminated a salad bar so voter turnout would be low.
In short, there's no way to guarantee that every piece of food that goes into your mouth is benign. With techniques such as the one described in the article, we'll hear of more people dying from contaminated food than we otherwise would have. People will panic, food will be destroyed, lawyers will sue and we'll plod along eating slightly more expensive food as a result. Will we be any better off? Probably not.
In fact, we may be worse off. As people demand more safety, government power will grow. We won't be safer, but the government will be larger which means we'll all be the poorer.
The problem is inspection -- not tracking outbreak (Score:2)
10 years ago, would it have taken a month to find the "source?" I remember little outbreaks like this in the past, and by the next day, we'd know what to avoid. We just heard "don't eat spinach." So, every salad bar, every grocery store, every restaurant dumped tons of s
Revolutionized Nothing (Score:2)
Excuse me but, you've not revolutionized food safety until you can prevent these outbreaks. So far you're still operating in 20/20 hindsight mode of "Now we know what happened."