• Created in 2011, the Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC) is a partnership of three federal agencies—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (FSIS). IFSAC aims to enhance the coordination of federal food safety analytic efforts and address cross-cutting priorities for food safety data collection, analysis, and use.  In particular, IFSAC’s projects and studies seek to identify foods that are important sources of human illness and focuses its analytic efforts on four priority pathogens: SalmonellaEscherichia coli ( coli) O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes (Lm), and Campylobacter.
  • Today, IFSAC released a report titled “Foodborne illness source attribution estimates for 2013 for Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157, Listeria monocytogenes, and Campylobacter using multi-year outbreak surveillance data, United States.” The authors used outbreak data to update previous analyses to estimate which foods are responsible for illness related to four foodborne pathogens. CDC estimates that, together, these four pathogens cause 1.9 million cases of foodborne illness in the U.S. each year. This latest analysis builds on a method developed by IFSAC in 2015 to estimate foodborne illness source attribution – the process of estimating the most common food sources responsible for specific foodborne illnesses. IFSAC described this method and the estimates for the year 2012 in a report and at a public meeting. The estimates for 2013 were derived using the same method as the 2012 estimates with a few modifications. Highlights of the findings noted in the report include:
    • Salmonella illnesses came from a wide variety of foods.
    • E. coli O157 illnesses were most often linked to Vegetable Row Crops (such as leafy greens) and Beef.
    • Listeria monocytogenes illnesses were most often linked to Fruits and Dairy products.
    • Non-Dairy Campylobacter illnesses were most often linked to Chicken.
  • The updated foodborne illness source attribution estimates combined with other data may potentially shape FDA priorities and influence the development of regulations and performance standards and measures.