Foodborne illness (FBI) case studies

FBI investigation in NSW

NSW Health and NSW Food Authority have joint responsibility for investigations into foodborne illness in NSW:

• NSW Health has responsibility to detect clusters of illness and undertake epidemiological investigations
• the Authority’s Compliance, Investigation and Enforcement Branch undertakes all food business-related investigations and business sampling.

Finding and assessing evidence to isolate specific causes of illness follows strong scientific principles.

Investigations concentrate on identifying outbreaks involving more than one person to:

• reduce risk of harm for the largest number of people, and
• enable collection of useful patterns of evidence.

Detection

Detection of foodborne illness and outbreaks comes from different sources including:

• laboratory or hospital notifications to NSW Health, in accordance with the NSW Public Health Act.
• routine food sampling or food survey work by the Authority or some food businesses
• complaints and reports of foodborne illness from the public to a Public Health Unit (PHU), NSW Health, the Authority or local councils.

Reports to the Authority and related information are logged into a central system to help with investigations.

Information sharing

The Food Act makes special provision for relevant health authorities and NSW food enforcement agencies to be able to provide information to each other for these purposes.

Specialist investigators

The Foodborne Illness Unit at the Authority is a specialist investigation team that:

• monitors incoming reports
• determines when in-depth investigations are warranted
• liaises with key contacts in other organisations such as NSW Health, public health units (PHUs), local council inspection staff and
• conducts investigations and works with other Authority units as required.

Case studies

Outbreak investigations by the foodborne illness team have included:

• aioli prepared from raw eggs: Salmonella Typhimurium
• fried ice cream using raw egg: Salmonella
• pre cooked meats: Clostridium perfringens