Wonderful Washington

To help ensure a consistent message and enforcement, WSDOH researches and shares actionable information on food recalls that affect Washington, facilitates thorough illness outbreak reporting and investigation, coordinates review of corporate food safety practices to prepare local health jurisdictions, prepares user guides and other field materials, and provides regular coordinating meetings with regulators across the state.

“Washington is a leader in food safety training and we provide exceptional training for retail food inspectors,” Graham emphasizes. “This includes regular annual safety workshops across the state and regular three-day New Inspector Training also for beginning food inspectors.”

Participating in the annual exercises and drills developed by the Washington RRT allows agency partners that work on food emergencies to develop and improve working relationships, Graham elaborates. “It also allows agencies to clarify roles and responsibilities, in turn strengthening interagency collaboration during actual emergencies,” he points out. “Working together prior to an emergency event allows the opportunity to identify problems and make improvements to the response.”

Besides emergency response exercises and drills, the RRT has provided multiple training opportunities for many local, state, and federal food safety teams around the state. “These trainings improve coordination, knowledge, and experience to better respond to routine foodborne illness outbreaks and emergency events,” Graham says. “These have also helped build more partnerships within the state between public health and agriculture departments to help us get even closer to meeting our goal of one health. We are already seeing results in our ability to work together on food protection issues.”

Epidemiologists
“We have strong relationships with health care providers and clinical laboratories in King County and Washington State,” says Jeffrey Duchin, MD, health officer and chief of the Communicable Disease Epidemiology and Immunization Section of Public Health—Seattle & King County.

“When people get ill they go to a doctor, and when the doctors suspect an outbreak they call public health. That’s our first line of defense in dealing with foodborne illness outbreaks, and our labs reliably report notifiable enteric infections and submit specimens to the Washington State Public Health Laboratory.”

According to Dr. Duchin, the colleagues he calls “tremendous public health epidemiologists” are the backbone of both foodborne illness investigations and, when needed, trace back efforts in King County. These professionals handled some 15 foodborne illness outbreaks in King County in 2015.

For one example of their efficiency, Dr. Duchin is proud of the outbreak investigation and trace back efforts of his team relative to an August 2015 recall of fresh pork products generated by a Washington meat company. The products were implicated in an outbreak of Salmonella I 4,[5],12:i-.

“We had to identify the common exposure among ill persons, then collaborate and coordinate effectively with the WSDA, WDOH, and USDA,” Dr. Duchin relates. “We have an amazing reservoir of food safety experts in Washington. Our RRT coordinated the investigation effectively to identify the problem with a multi-step process and microbiological cultures, and then they responded responsibly by taking corrective action.”

Based on epidemiological evidence, 152 case-patients were identified in Washington with illness onset dates ranging from April 25, 2015 to Aug. 12, 2015.

Dr. Duchin says that USDA made recommendations to the meat company in question to address sources of contamination at the slaughterhouse. “USDA does not disclose the specific corrections they take,” he points out. “We informed the public of the risk and safe food handling and preparation steps they can take to prevent illness.”

Dr. Duchin also credits his section’s environmental health team for their efforts in dealing with a 2016 Listeria contamination of a soft serve ice cream machine in a local hospital. “Two hospitalized patients got sick from eating milk shakes that originated from that machine,” he says. “Our team showed their strengths at following the evidence and conducting a directed investigation.”