Food Poisoning Cases Underreported, Says Food Safety Specialist

A food safety specialist from Kansas State University claims that most often food poisoning cases are not reported.

In order to improve food safety it is necessary to identify symptoms for food poisoning as well as report the foodborne illnesses such as norovirus, salmonella and E.Coli to the doctor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that in 2013 alone there were 19,056 cases of food borne infection.

According to CDC, every year 1 in 6 Americans get sick and 1,28,000 get hospitalized and 3,000 die of food borne diseases.

"We really want to reduce the number of foodborne illness outbreaks," said Karen Blakeslee, extension specialist in food science and coordinator of the Rapid Response Center. "It's important to understand foodborne illness and its symptoms because the whole topic of foodborne illness is really underreported."

Though many people don't report the sicknesses from contaminated food as they fail to realize that it is a case of food poisoning. Foodborne infections have symptoms like  vomiting, diarrhea, headache and fever, which are similar to other illnesses. A few distinct symptoms include double vision, dizziness, lethargy and dehydration.

In order to declare a foodborne infection outbreak, more than two people should have similar symptoms.

Blakeslee says, "Another challenge with decreasing the number of outbreaks is trying to determine the food that was contaminated. It's not necessarily what you ate that day or the day before. Some of the symptoms for the different kinds of bacteria may take up to a couple of weeks to occur, so that's why it makes it really hard to identify the cause of the outbreak."