Chocolate Products Lead to Massive Food-borne Outbreaks in Europe

Chocolate products are found to be associated with an outbreak of monophasic Salmonella Typhimurium in 10 European countries as per the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), published in the Eurosurveillance.

So far, 150 cases have been reported as of 8th April 2022 (case sampling dates ranging from 21 December 2021 - the first United Kingdom (UK) case to 28 March 2022), predominantly affecting young children.

‘Massive outbreak of a multidrug resistant strain of monophasic Salmonella Typhimurium in 10 European countries (with 150 reported cases) is found to be linked with the manufacture of chocolate products.’

This has resulted in most extensive withdrawals of chocolate products in European commercial history, since the identification of the first cases in the UK in February 2022.

In addition, the Salmonella strain demonstrated genotypic markers of an unusual antimicrobial resistance pattern - not related to any other UK strains of monophasic S. Typhimurium and not commonly seen in livestock, food, or human disease cases in the UK.

Chocolate Products and European Outbreak

The outbreak had resulted in 42% of hospitalization rate - higher than that usually reported in salmonellosis outbreaks and for individual cases of infection with S. Typhimurium, indicating the increased clinical severity of the infection.

Upon further epidemiological investigation, the outbreak strain had been identified predominantly at a single production site in Belgium and in the processing equipment for the buttermilk ingredient, following which news alerts were notified to various countries.

These data provide microbiological confirmation of the link between the company's products and the Europe-wide outbreak.

Moreover, the heightened risk of multidrug resistance to the strain enforced the public health and food safety authorities to undertake the necessary controls swiftly.

Source: Medindia