The number of Salmonella food contamination cases in Australia is increasing despite more education campaigns on food safety.
While foodborne illnesses dropped overall by 17 per cent in the decade to 2010, the two leading causes of hospitalisation, Salmonella and Campylobacter, increased by 24 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.
Salmonella bacteria can be carried in undercooked chicken or eggs, while Campylobacter is usually found in raw or undercooked poultry meat and raw milk.
Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) say there were about 16 million cases of gastroenteritis each year, and four million of those are caused by food contamination.
It means Australians suffer a food contamination illness once every five years.
Associate Professor Martyn Kirk from the ANU’s National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health said outbreaks like that are preventable.
“There certainly has been ongoing concern about rising rates of salmonella over the last decade,” he said.
“We’ve been seeing increasing numbers of outbreaks that have been investigated by health departments, so that is quite concerning because food safety and health departments have made a lot of efforts in the past 15 years to try to improve the safety of the food supply.”
Associate Professor Kirk said the food safety messages do not appear to be getting through.
“I think there’s still a lot of work to be done not only at the food service sector, so restaurants and caterers, but also with consumers,” he said.
“More importantly at the primary production sector, so preventing contamination of eggs that are being used for sale, or chicken meat that is sold.”