Abstract
Foodborne illness surveillance systems are designed to collect, analyze, and disseminate information about foodborne illnesses. Consequently, they help solve critical information problems faced by consumers, firms, and government agencies. By providing better information to the market, these surveillance systems create incentives (accountability) that leads to safer foods and better consumer awareness. For public health officials, surveillance provides a means to identify and mitigate current outbreaks, prioritize resources, and craft better preventative interventions.
To illustrate the economic value of surveillance, we provide an analysis of one system (PulseNet) using updated economic data and models. PulseNet-related activities lead to substantial social benefits due to reductions in illnesses due to Salmonella spp. and E. coli O157:H7. Adjusting for underreporting and underdiagnosis, as many as 330,840 Salmonella- and 17,475 E. coli-related illnesses are averted each year due to PulseNet. This leads to economic benefits of up to $5.4 billion.
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- CDC:
-
Centers for Disease Control Research and Prevention/US
- CIFOR:
-
Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response
- FDA:
-
Food and Drug Administration/US
- FDOSS:
-
Food Disease Outbreak Surveillance System
- FOOD Tool:
-
Foodborne Outbreak Online Database
- HUS:
-
Hemolytic uremic syndrome
- NNDSS:
-
National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System
- NORS:
-
National Outbreak Reporting System
- PFGE:
-
Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis
- PulseNet:
-
National Molecular Subtyping Network for Foodborne Disease Surveillance
- STEC:
-
Shiga-toxin E. coli
- WGS:
-
Whole genome sequencing
- USDA:
-
United States Department of Agriculture
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Scharff, R.L., Hedberg, C. (2018). The Role of Surveillance in Promoting Food Safety. In: Roberts, T. (eds) Food Safety Economics. Food Microbiology and Food Safety(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92138-9_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92138-9_13
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