Prevalence And Enumeration Of Foodborne Microbial Hazards In Retail Raw Meat Products In Three Sentinel Communities

This is a request for the Public Health Agency of Canada. Background and Scope: FoodNet Canada is a surveillance program of the Public Health Agency of Canada. The primary objective of FoodNet Canada is to provide information to integrate and strengthen the science, policy, intervention, prevention, and health promotion and protection activities related to both food and water safety in Canada. More precisely, it delivers reliable annual estimates and trends over time for human cases, exposures, and source attribution, to inform future food and water safety policy development and provide capacity to local, provincial and federal public health authorities in the prevention of enteric diseases in Canada. The Agri-food component of FoodNet Canada includes a retail food surveillance program that provides baseline prevalence & enumeration data for foodborne enteric contamination (Campylobacter, Salmonella spp., verotoxigenic E. coli, generic E. coli and Listeria monocytogenes) on retail raw meat (chicken, pork and beef primarily). These results are then used to inform and support Canadian -specific risk assessment & policy development (through baseline data reports). These data will be integrated with water, on-farm and human data from the same geographic regions. Physical Boundaries of Sample Collection: The sample collection areas are FoodNet Canada sentinel sites located in Fraser Health Authority, British Columbia, Calgary and Central Region, Alberta and Middlesex-London Health Unit, Ontario. Each site is a community of 450,000 to 900,000 residents with urban and rural demographics similar to that of the Canadian average. An agreement has been developed in the form of a memorandum of agreement with each site.