If 14 people confirmed sick is a small outbreak, what's a large one? And where's the cutoff?

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Doug Powell

Going through the food safety press releases of Canadian bureaucracies for inconsistencies is like fishing with dynamite.

So many little tips that a bunch of $50-150K per year salaries sweated over.

Yesterday, the Public Health Agency of Canada said it was “working with provincial and local health authorities, Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to investigate a small outbreak of Salmonella Cubana.”

I have no idea how the public health types distinguish a small from a large outbreak, but I bet it doesn’t feel very small to the 14 identified people who have been barfing from raw sprouts.

And I’m sure it’s comforting to those barfing that,

“For most people, the risk posed by Salmonella infections is low.  Salmonella is the most frequently reported cause of food-related outbreaks of stomach illness worldwide.”

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