Food Safety: Foodborne Disease in Australia: The OzFoodNet Experience

Abstract

In 2000, Australia improved national surveillance of gastrointestinal and foodborne illness by adapting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) FoodNet model of active surveillance. The OzFoodNet surveillance network applied concentrated effort at the national and local levels to investigate and understand foodborne disease, to describe more effectively its epidemiology, and to provide better evidence for minimizing the number of cases of foodborne illness in Australia. The Australian government funded each of Australia’s 6 states and 2 territories to employ 1 epidemiologist to enhance surveillance of foodborne disease, with a coordinating team based at the federal Department of Health and Ageing. OzFoodNet estimated that there are ∼5.4 million cases of foodborne disease per year, costing A$1.2 billion annually. In Australia, contaminated food results in ∼100 outbreaks of illness each year, with the incidence of outbreaks of illness caused by fresh produce and internationally distributed food increasing. In addition, OzFoodNet showed the value of aggregating national-level outbreak data for policy development and conducted successful multijurisdictional investigations of outbreaks; these investigations implicated a variety of foods, including alfalfa sprouts, chicken meat, eggs, peanuts, baby corn, tahini, and oysters. Foodborne diseases are globally important because of their high incidence and the costs that they impose on society. There is a great potential for large outbreaks of foodborne illness in both developing and developed countries. More than 200 different diseases may be transmitted through contaminated food or water [1]. Most foodborne diseases result in gastroenteritis, but other nongastroenteric illnesses are common. Prevention of foodborne disease occurs through interventions aimed at the