Tough controls needed to prevent salmonella

Salmonellosis is on the rise in Europe and tougher controls are needed to prevent the spread of the foodborne disease, a senior World Health Organisation official said on Tuesday.

Present at a pan-European conference on food safety in Budapest this week, Jorgen Schlundt, head of food safety at the Geneva-based WHO told Reuters:"Salmonellosis has been on the rise for more than 10, maybe 15 years in different countries. It is clear that most countries have had a significant rise."​

The higher incidence of the disease in humans was due to an increased presence of salmonella bacteria in animals, with much of the increase due to outbreaks of a strain of the bacteria often linked to eggs, Schlundt said.

Salmonellosis occurs in most countries and a 1994 outbreak traced to contaminated ice cream affected 224,000 people in the United States.Eggs, poultry and other meats, raw milk and chocolate are typical foods involved in outbreaks of salmonellosis. Symptoms are fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhoea.

Schlundt said health authorities had to act to prevent salmonella contamination in food production, and educate the public on kitchen hygiene. But he said it was unlikely that the disease could be wiped out altogether.

Surveillance programmes to trace salmonella in feed, live animals, carcasses, meat and other foods of animal origin had worked effectively in Sweden and Finland, Schlundt stressed.

He added that food safety was complicated by the fact that salmonella bacteria did not make animals ill, and said that some strains of the bacteria had developed resistance to antibiotics.

One strain, so-called Salmonella typhimurium DT104​, has developed resistance to five commonly prescribed antibiotics and is a major concern in many countries because of its rapid spread during the 1990s, according to the WHO.

The food safety conference, hosted by the WHO and the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, ends on 28 February 2002.