Cataloguing food bacteria

Tracking the cause of food related illnesses can be difficult, with foods containing huge amounts of different bacteria. However, researchers at a US university hope they will soon be able to identify the origin of most of the disease.

An extensive new database at the University of California is being set up to help collate the genetic code of hundreds of thousands of bacteria found in food.

The data will allow scientists to trace the bacteria to the specific food it was carried in, as well as the country it originated in. As many as 100,000 different genetic codes of bacteria are expected to be collected, a significantly higher number than the 1,000 identified so far. In Salmonella there are thought to be as many as 2,700 different types of gene code.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) described the plans as “a big deal form a scientific standpoint”. Dr Steven Musser said that the current database at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention only carries partial gene maps, which is not enough information to trace the origin of the bacteria. The new database, which will be publicly available, will greatly improve that.

Food-based diseases strike down as many as 30 percent of developed countries populations every year, with approximately 76 million cases in the US annually. However, it is in developing countries where the impact is felt worst. Although hard to estimate the global figure for food-related illnesses, it is thought that in the year 2000 as many as 2.1 million people died from diseases carried in food.