CDC Approach to Food Attribution

Elaine Scallan, CDC
John Painter, CDC

The Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch (FDDB), Division of Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases (DBMD), National Center for Infectious Diseases, has provided national estimates on the human health burden of acute foodborne diseases. More recently, FDDB has been working towards analyzing information currently available to gain better information on the proportion of human illnesses that can be attributed to specific foods.

Foodborne illnesses may be attributed to the contamination of foods at any point from consumption (‘the fork) to the pathogen reservoir (‘the farm’). While thousands of individual foods have been associated with human illness, FDDB is working on several attribution projects that will estimate the proportion of illness due to foods prepared with major food commodities such as dairy products, eggs, and fish.  To facilitate discussion of attribution, it is useful to consider three different but overlapping approaches and data sources for attribution analyses:

(1) Information concerning food vehicles identified in outbreak investigations and in case-control studies of sporadic infections can be used in an analysis we call “point-of-consumption” attribution

(2) Information concerning the prevalence and characteristics of pathogens detected in food processing sources can be compared with similar information on pathogens isolated from ill persons in an analysis we call “point-of-processing” attribution

(3) Information concerning the prevalence and characteristics of pathogens detected in foods before harvest can be compared with similar information on pathogens isolated from ill persons in an analysis we call “pre-harvest” attribution.

Each of these approaches may be used to help estimate the attribution of human illness to major food commodities. We view these three approaches as complimentary; each is useful for informing public health policy.