Dive Brief:
- An E. coli outbreak linked to chicken salad bought at Costco last week has sickened 19 people in seven states. Though the strain of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli can be life-threatening, federal agencies haven't reported any deaths from this strain, though two people have developed kidney failure.
- The ingredient in the chicken salad that caused the outbreak has not yet been identified.
- The outbreak comes as the FDA is increasing "microbiological surveillance of key commodities that have had issues with contamination in the past," Politico reported.
Dive Insight:
The FDA is ramping up its collection efforts of food samples to gather more in a shorter period of time, between one year and 18 months, to go along with a surveillance initiative the agency began in 2014. "The goal is to better understand which commodities make consumers sick and why as the FDA gears up to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act," according to Politico.
In its last go-round, the FDA gathered more than 800 samples of each food tested, and this time, the agency will gather 1,600 samples of each food. The FDA has performed these tests on sprouts, whole fresh avocados, and raw milk cheese (aged 60 days), though no results have been released to the public. Cucumbers and hot peppers are next.
"The sampling approximates what U.S. consumers are likely to encounter in the marketplace from both domestic and imported product," the FDA said.