The Foster Farms Salmonella outbreak has sickened 278 people in 17 states and hospitalized 76 of them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) whose shutdown-induced skeleton crew weighed in on the outbreak yesterday. Lab tests have identified seven strains of the bacteria involved in the outbreak, four are rare, three are common and four are resistant to multiple drugs. One of them is a genetic match to the strain associated with the Foster Farms Salmonella outbreak earlier this year.
Washington State Public Health Laboratories identified one of the outbreak strains in a leftover intact sample of raw Foster Farms chicken that was collected from an ill person’s home in Washington. The National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) retail meat surveillance program monitors antibiotic resistance in Salmonella, Campylobacter, Enterococcus, and E. coli bacteria isolated from raw retail meats. NARMS tested five retail samples of Foster Farms chicken breasts and wings collected in California and found four of the seven outbreak strains al of which were resistant to one or more commonly prescribed antibiotics. Two strains were multidrug resistant. So far, the strains have shown resistance to the following antibiotics: ampicillin, chloramphenicol, gentamicin, kanamycin, streptomycin, sulfisoxazole, and tetracycline.
Most of the illnesses reported, 77 percent, are in California. By state the case count is as follows: Alaska (2), Arkansas (1), Arizona (11), California (213), Colorado (4), Connecticut (1), Florida (1), Hawaii (1), Idaho (2), Michigan (2), North Carolina (1), Nevada (8), Oregon (8), Texas (5), Utah (2), Washington (15) and Wisconsin (1).
Among 274 case patients for whom information is available, onset of illness dates range from March 1 to September 24, 2013. The age range is less than 1 year to 93 years years old with a median age of 20 years. Fifty-one percent of those sickened are male. No deaths have been reported.
A recall for the chicken has not been issued. However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) has issued a public health alert. Consumers should not eat raw chicken from Foster Farms that bears one of the following establishment numbers inside a USDA mark of inspection or elsewhere on the package “P6137,” “P6137A,” and “P7632.”
