“There once was a lawyer sitting in a bar in Auckland” – sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.  I just finished up the Food Security Conference and extracted myself from the battle over eating medium rare hamburgers in New Zealand, when I had time to read the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) – sounds fun?  In it was an unreported outbreak.  Here are the details:

Hot-chile-peppersIn June 2016, PulseNet identified a cluster of 16 Salmonella Anatum infections with an indistinguishable pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) pattern from four states. In April 2016, the same PFGE pattern had been uploaded to PulseNet from an isolate obtained from an Anaheim pepper, a mild to medium hot pepper. Hot peppers include many pepper varieties, such as Anaheim, jalapeño, poblano, and serrano, which can vary in heat level from mild to very hot depending on the variety and preparation. This rare PFGE pattern had been seen only 24 times previously in the PulseNet database, compared with common PFGE patterns for this serotype which have been seen in the database hundreds of times. Local and state health departments, CDC, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigated to determine the cause of the outbreak. Thirty-two patients in nine states were identified with illness onsets from May 6–July 9, 2016. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) was performed to characterize clinical isolates and the Anaheim pepper isolate further. The combined evidence indicated that fresh hot peppers were the likely source of infection; however, a single pepper type or source farm was not identified. This outbreak highlights challenges in reconciling epidemiologic and WGS data, and the difficulties of identifying ingredient-level exposures through epidemiologic investigations alone.

The CDC’s response:

On June 21, 2016, before the epidemiologic investigation began, FDA placed consolidator/grower B on import alert for Anaheim peppers because they could be contaminated with Salmonella. (A product under an import alert is held at the port of entry before being allowed to enter the country. The importer must provide FDA evidence that the product is free from Salmonella within 10 business days of detention of the product; otherwise, the product cannot be imported.) There were only two outbreak-associated illnesses reported after the import alert was issued.