The problem of food safety is common for some hot parts of the world like Africa, Middle Asia, South America. These days the low level of food safety, the absence of health infrastructure, and the inability of the authorities to take preventive measures contribute a lot to appearing emergencies in some countries. Regrettably, sometimes the same issues happen in developed countries like the USA too. America has been facing many various outbreaks of food safety problems. Most of them have already been solved and do not pose any threat to the population, thanks to health-care services as they provide all the necessary help to stop the spread of various diseases food safety. This statement can be proved by considering the case of a salmonella outbreak in 2008-2009 that was caused by a virus discovered in peanut butter and contributed to the death of nine people.
Public health infrastructure provides monitoring and analysis of the current situation with food safety helping to take immediate action in case of emergency. Many workers are included in this activity in order to make the local authorities be aware of what is happening in the country and control the level of the existing problem (Litt et al., 2004). Food safety hugely depends on qualitative and comprehensive monitoring that is provided by states’ public health workers. Many agencies, departments throughout the country gather data on outbreaks, provide disease surveillance, and epidemiologic assessment, research laboratories in order to understand what has become the reason for an outbreak. For instance, the significant role has been played by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and other agencies during massive salmonella spread in 2008-2009. It was these institutions that made it possible to prevent the virus from further spreading.
The health institutions of the country have contributed to the stability of the situation to fight the food crisis by identifying the primary source that contains the salmonella virus and removing it. In 2008-2009 it was discovered that peanut butter named King Nut had had a virus. This butter is sold to many institutions and companies all over the U.S.: from schools and hospitals to restaurants and bakeries. The timely detection of the source of salmonella and the removal of peanut butter of the mentioned brand stopped the further transmission of the virus. It was possible only with the help of public health workers.
However, it could be claimed that public health infrastructure works inefficiently as more than 700 people were infected. Nevertheless, there are a bunch of reasons that can explain the situation. Firstly, it is noted that there is a reporting delay that makes it challenging to identify the particular date of the start of an outbreak and to take preventive actions on time. Secondly, some cases of infection could happen without an outbreak. Therefore, some problems may be caused by a range of obstacles, but thanks to health institutions, the issue can be detected and tackled as soon as possible.
All in all, the public health system of the USA provides health-care services all over the country for people who got food poisoning. It is widely known that food containing dangerous viruses or parasites may lead to a massive infection. However, the country would not be able to fight severe food problems without health infrastructure, local workers in this sphere. Such institutions serve as a permanent tool of taking any situation under control and protecting people from food hazards.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Multistate outbreak of salmonella typhimurium infections linked to peanut butter, 2008-2009, Atlanta, GA: Author.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2008 –2009 Salmonella typhimurium outbreak response. After action report, May 18, 2009. Atlanta, GA: Author.
Litt, J., Tran, N., Malecki, K. C., Neff, R., Resnick, B., & Burke, T. (2004). Identifying priority health conditions, environmental data, and infrastructure needs: a synopsis of the Pew Environmental Health tracking project. Environmental Health Perspectives. 112(14), 1414–1418.
McCarthy, S. (2016). Introduction to Public Health [Video file]. Web.