Getting To The CORE Of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks
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The FDA recently announced the implementation of a fully-staffed network dedicated to rapidly responding to human and animal foodborne illness outbreaks. This group is called the Coordinated Outbreak Response and Evaluation (CORE) Network.
Kathleen F. Gensheimer, formally Maine’s state epidemiologist, will lead CORE, in the new position of Chief Medical Officer/Outbreak Director. Under the leadership of Gensheimer and the FDA, CORE will be staffed by epidemiologists, veterinarians, microbiologists, environmental health specialists and risk communications specialists.
Their primary objectives of the new group are to: (1) rapidly respond to emerging outbreaks; and (2) research past outbreaks in order to develop new preventative methods in the hopes of mitigating or preventing future outbreaks.
Gensheimer, quoted in the FDA’s press release, stated, “A real benefit of the network approach is enhancing communication and coordination with federal, state and local food safety agencies, as well as industry and consumers. Given my background at the state public health level, this is a major priority for me.”
Before CORE was created, there was no centralized staff, but rather various offices of the FDA that responded to incidents. CORE, FDA is hopeful, will provide a more in-depth process of monitoring and evaluating foodborne illness outbreaks as well as facilitating faster responses when outbreaks do occur.
The lack of coordination between the multiple governmental agencies involved in foodborne illness outbreaks has, historically, resulted in a host of problems. In some instances, these have included errors in trace back investigations conducted by local health department personnel which have prevented the true source of an outbreak from being identified.
The FDA confirms that CORE will work closely in all outbreak investigations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), as well as public health and agriculture agencies.
“The centralized staff of the CORE Network will work closely with FDA’s field emergency response coordinators and the investigative and analytical teams in the District offices and associated laboratories,” said Dara Corrigan, associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. “Working together will help to both standardize and strengthen how we conduct foodborne outbreak activities in the field.”
Ideally, CORE will fundamentally change the manner in which foodborne illness investigations are conducted in a way that allows for faster resolutions, more effective trace back and most importantly, fewer illness.
