Home-Based Foodborne Illness

When several members of a household come down with sudden, severe diarrhea and vomiting, intestinal flu is often considered the likely culprit. But food poisoning may be another consideration.A true diagnosis is often never made because the ill people recover without having to see a doctor.Health experts believe this is a common situation in households across the country, and because a doctor is often not seen for this kind of illness, the incidence of foodborne illness is not really known.It is thought that 76 million cases of foodborne disease occur each year in the USA. The great majority of these cases are mild and cause symptoms for only a day or two. Some cases are more serious, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths related to foodborne diseases each year. The most severe cases tend to occur in the very old, the very young, those who have an illness already that reduces their immune system function, and in healthy people exposed to a very high dose of an organism.Cases of home-based foodborne illness may become a bigger problem, some food safety experts say, partly because today's busy family may not be as familiar with food safety issues as more home-focused families of past generations.The increased use of convenience foods, which often are preserved with special chemicals and processes, also complicates today's home food safety practices, says Robert Buchanan, Ph.D., senior science advisor and director of science in the United States of America Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. These foods, such as TV dinners, which are specially preserved, give customers a false idea that equivalent home-cooked foods are equally safe, he says.To curb the problem, food safety experts recommend food safety education emphasizing the principles of HACCP (danger Analysis and Critical Control Point), a new food safety procedure that A lot of food companies are now incorporating into their manufacturing processes. Unlike past practices, HACCP focuses on preventing foodborne dangers, such as microbial contamination, by identifying points at which dangers can be introduced into the food and then controlling and monitoring these potential problem areas.

"it is mainly taking a common-sense approach towards food safety in the home," says Buchanan. "Basically, customers need to make sure they're not defeating the system by contaminating the product."