Dar seafood ppp standard

Food-borne illness associated with Australian seafood

There have been a number of documented outbreaks of seafood-associated food-borne illness in Australia in recent years. Since 1987:

• 
  outbreaks due to finfish have been caused by ciguatoxin, histamine (scombrotoxin) and wax esters (gempylotoxin)
  
• 
  outbreaks due to crustacea have been caused by bacterial and viral pathogens, including Salmonella Typhi, S. Typhimurium PT 64, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, V. cholerae non-O1/ non-O139, hepatitis A virus and Clostridium perfringens
  
• 
  outbreaks due to molluscs have been caused by Noroviruses, hepatitis A virus, V. parahaemolyticus, V. vulnificus, S. Mississippi, Listeria monocytogenes and diarrhoetic shellfish poison (Appendix 2; [19]).
  
  
  

However, these outbreak data represent only a small component of the total morbidity due to seafood consumption in Australia. Sporadic cases of food-borne illness are not included in these datasets (unless a death results), and a low level of reporting of food-borne illness is generally understood to be a major problem. While physicians are required to report some specific illnesses with food-borne aetiology, many food-borne illnesses are not notifiable. Furthermore, most people do not seek medical attention for various mild forms of gastroenteritis, and even quite severe illnesses are typically significantly under-reported [20].
In 2003, OzFoodNet conservatively estimated that the number of cases of food-borne illness in Australia in a typical year from all food sources is between 4 million and 6.9 million cases (mid point 5.4 million cases) [21]. However, in the same report, data is given for outbreaks of food-borne illness in Australia in 2002, indicating there were 92 documented outbreaks affecting only 1819 people. The extent of under-reporting of food-borne illness evident in these datasets highlights the danger of relying solely on outbreak data in evaluating the public health risks due to food safety hazards.