Salmonella Food Poisoning

The future doesn’t look good either. The Centre for Social and Economic Research in the UK predicts an additional 179,000 cases of food poisoning by the year 2050 if global warming takes its expected effect.

While death as a direct result of food poisoning is rare, the combination of its symptoms with other factors such as heat-related illnesses, immune system deficiency and other diseases can be enough to cause the mortality rate to increase during an outbreak. One estimate puts the figure at 9,000 US citizens per year.

The cook is often the first person to take the wrath of a diarrhoea-riddled consumer. But the contamination can take place at any stage in the farming, distribution and preparation process. Almost all contamination is a result of improper food handling in commercial and industrial establishments. Only about a fifth of contamination occurs at home. The increasing reliance on take-away food, catering services, restaurants, institutional kitchens and convenience food increases the risk of mass outbreaks of food-borne illnesses.

The weather is only indirectly to blame for an outbreak. Food providers will have to take in consideration a forecasted hot spell and adjust their food handling practices accordingly.

Source: How the Weather Affects Your Health, Manfred Kaiser

Another scorcher of a day is forecast and bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and staphylococci just love it. These tiny organisms thrive and multiply in warm conditions. Most grow at temperatures between 5°C and 60°C but are particularly active at the halfway mark. In this temperature range, the bacteria chew away on their piece of chicken, meat, fish, or any other food and leave their toxic excrement for you to eat. You may develop stomach cramps, diarrhoea or vomiting. Temperatures above 60°C kill bacteria, but their residues remain toxic.

The victims often don’t report mild cases of salmonella food poisoning, and if they do the doctor may attribute the symptoms to some other disease. The true number of food poisoning victims, therefore, can only be estimated. US government officials believe that between 24 and 81 million cases of diarrhoea occur every year as a result of food-borne bacteria, at a cost of between A$10 and A$34 billion to the community (medical care and lost productivity). In the UK, some 2 million people suffer from food poisoning every year, where hot spells result in a massive increase in food poisoning incidents: every degree the temperature goes up, the incidents rise by 7%.