An Economic Evaluation of PulseNet

A Network for Foodborne Disease Surveillance

The PulseNet surveillance system is a molecular subtyping network of public health and food regulatory agency laboratories designed to identify and facilitate investigation of foodborne illness outbreaks.

This study estimates health and economic impacts associated with PulseNet.

The staggered adoption of PulseNet across the states offers a natural experiment to evaluate its effectiveness, which is measured as reduction of reported illnesses due to improved information, enhanced industry accountability, and more-rapid recalls.

Economic impacts attributable to PulseNet include medical costs and productivity losses averted due to reduced illness.

Program costs are also reported. Better information and accountability from enhanced surveillance is associated with large reductions of reported illnesses.

Data collected between 1994 and 2009 were assembled and analyzed between 2010 and 2015. Conservatively, accounting for underreporting and under diagnosis, 266,522 illnesses from Salmonella, 9,489 illnesses from Escherichia coli (E. coli), and 56 illnesses due to Listeria monocytogenes are avoided annually.

This reduces medical and productivity costs by $507 million.

Additionally, direct effects from improved recalls reduce illnesses from E. coli by 2,819 and Salmonella by 16,994, leading to $37 million in costs averted.

  

Annual costs to public health agencies are $7.3 million.

 The PulseNet system makes possible the identification of food safety risks by detecting widespread or non-focal outbreaks.

This gives stakeholders information for informed decision making and provides a powerful incentive for industry. Furthermore, PulseNet enhances the focus of regulatory agencies and limits the impact of outbreaks. 

The health and economic benefits from PulseNet and the foodborne disease surveillance system are substantial.

Source: http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797%2815%2900610-8/abstract

New food safety rules pose impact for refrigerated carriers

Refrigerated carriers face a bevy of new mandates according to FSMA.
Refrigerated carriers face a bevy of new mandates governing not only the condition and operation of equipment used transport foodstuffs but the capture and preservation of shipment temperatures, along with driver training requirements, due to go into effect March 31.
The new rules devolve from the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama back in 2011, noted Don Durm, director of strategic customer solutions for PLM Trailer Leasing, during a panel discussion at the 2016 Truckload Carriers Association (TCA) meeting last week in Las Vegas.
“It really should be called the ‘Food Safety Documentation Act’ because there is nothing really new in it in terms of ‘modernization,’” Drum said. “But what it does is involve the FDA [the U.S. Food and Drug Administration] in the food supply chain as an enforcement agency. So why you need to pay attention to this [FSMA] is due to two words: criminal prosecution.”
He noted that while shippers and receivers are the main targets of the FSMA, refrigerated carriers become involved as the new rules require detailed temperature data to be collected and maintained, while imposing equipment and driving requirements as well.
Drum noted that refrigerated carriers are affected in three broad areas:

They would be required to subject to record keeping, probably for a 12 month time period that describes how they provide temperature data; their practices for cleaning, sanitizing, and inspecting vehicles and transportation equipment; and establish requirements for the training of carrier personnel engaged in transportation operations, including a requirement for records that document the training.

Regardless of that FDA personnel change, Durm maintained that refrigerated fleets would feel specific impacts in several key areas of their operations:

•It will affect trailer designs, depending on shipper requirements resulting from the new rules;
•It will tighten sanitary cleaning requirements of said trailers;
•There will be a “pre-cool” requirement for many shipments;
•Temperature tracking will be mandated;
•Data exchange and retention will be mandated;
•Driver food safety training will be required and a record of that training must be kept on file for access upon request.
 This is all part of a switch from the FDA reporting food contamination to taking an active role in preventing it. As a result, R. Fenton May, chairman of telematics provider CarrierWeb – who co-presented with PLM’s Durm –  urged refrigerated carriers to be proactive with their customers about the impending rules.

Source: Food HACCP