Tracing Foodborne Illness Using Frequent Shopper Cards

The investigation of the Salmonella Montevideo outbreak associated with brands of salami made by Daniele Inc. is the first such investigation to utilize information from shopper reward cards to determine specific brands of a product suspected to cause illness, according to the CDC.

I'm not going to cover the whole salami story, but I thought this was an interesting bit of information. How did it take us till now to figure out that the meticulate lists of of our purchases kept by grocery stores might be useful in tracking foodborne illnesses? Certainly it's a more reliable method than the usual system of self-reporting. The new food safety legislation pending in the Senate should improve our ability to trace foods at a farm-to-fork level, but this is a good example of how industry cooperation can go a long way toward improving our food safety apparatus.

The full story at Food Safety News.