PDF version of The 2010 Multi-State Salmonella Outbreak in Eggs

Interactive version of Multi-State Microbial Food Contamination Epidemics in the US, 1993 to 2008

Data: Guzewich & Salbury 2000, Marler Clark 2008, O’Shea 2007.

Click to open the interactive version and bring up information on the microbe, food product, and firm or country implicated in an epidemic. The date is the approximate time the epidemic was publicly announced. The timeline does not include epidemics limited to single states and is very incomplete due to underreporting and inability to identify all microbes responsible for illnesses. For a more comprehensive database see the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Outbreak Alert!. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that the incidence of some foodborne diseases declined from 1996 to 2004, but there has been little progress since then.

PDF version of The 2006 E. coli outbreak in Natural Selection Foods’ bagged spinach commodity chain

For more detail see: DeLind, Laura B. and Philip H. Howard. 2008. Safe at any Scale? Food Scares, Food Regulation and Scaled Alternatives. Agriculture and Human Values, 25(3), 301-317 (available from the authors by request).