Import Alert Action Taken by the US Food and Drug Administration as a Result of Regulatory Food Testing by the New York State Rapid Response Team During an International Salmonella Outbreak Investigation

Introduction:  From May-August 2014, an outbreak of Salmonella infections with 31 cases from 16 states in the US and 63 cases from 4 provinces in Canada was identified and linked to the consumption of organic sprouted chia seed powder through epidemiologic and traceback investigations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the New York State Rapid Response Team (NY-RRT), the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), the Canadian Food Inspection Authority (CFIA), and several state, provincial, and local public health and regulatory food safety agencies.  Under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), FDA is charged with both improving state and local food safety capacities as well as reliance on inspections by federal, state, and local agencies and data from International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 17025 accredited laboratories.

Purpose: This investigation was aimed at identifying the source of the Salmonella outbreak and taking necessary regulatory actions to protect public health.

Methods:  Epidemiologic and traceback investigations implicated a single Canadian firm as a common supplier of the organic sprouted chia seed powder.  The NY-RRT sampled sealed implicated product from a NY retail establishment and submitted to their ISO 17025 accredited laboratory for Salmonella testing (screening by polymerase chain reaction [PCR] and culture confirmation using the FDA Bacteriological Analytical Manual [BAM]).  Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) was performed according to PulseNet protocols.

Results: Salmonella Newport was isolated from the implicated product, reported to PulseNet, and was found to be indistinguishable from the outbreak pattern.  FDA used NY-RRT test result data to support issuance of an import alert for the implicated product.

Significance: Public health partnerships between public health and regulatory food safety agencies led to the rapid issuance of an FDA import alert on the basis of NY-RRT testing data to expedite control of this outbreak.