ST. PAUL — Three days before Christmas, a call to Minnesota's food-borne illness hotline set off bells: A nursing home had three residents sickened by salmonella.
Salmonella cases had been bubbling up in Minnesota for a month, longer in other states. Here was a potential cluster. Minnesota's food-borne illness team sprang into action. State workers pored over the nursing home's menus, looking for clues. Another case popped up at a different nursing home, then two at a school. More menus were compared.
Within three weeks, Minnesota identified King Nut peanut butter as the culprit, and Peanut Corp. of America as the producer. It was the first big break in a case that has sickened more than 677 nationwide, might have led to nine deaths and has caused one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history, affecting more than 3,000 products.
Without the Minnesota break — and the presence of a cluster of cases from a confined population such as the nursing home's — the outbreak "could have dragged on for who knows how long," says Tom Safranek, state epidemiologist in Nebraska.
Full story: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2009-03-04-food-illness-detection_N.htm
