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International Food Safety Conference

The recent international food safety conference in Melbourne attracted 500 delegates representing fourteen countries. The conference was developed cooperatively by Food Science Australia, the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology and the Victorian Department of Human Services. The international context was boosted by the concurrent meeting of the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF).

Australian speakers included the following from Food Science Australia: Barry Shay, Trish Desmarchelier, Martin Cole, John Pitt and Peter Varelis.

The conference made clear that a problem which besets all countries and which is acute in Australia, is the collection of data on food poisoning incidents. The Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA) in its 1999 publication Food Safety Standards - Costs and Benefits, estimates that there are over four million cases of foodborne illness every year in Australia.

The data supporting this estimate are inevitably flimsy but comparison with overseas data indicates that on a per capita basis the figure is similar for comparable countries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States have recently released their estimate of food borne illness in that country of 76 million cases per year and 325,000 serious illnesses resulting in hospitalisation.

Craig Dalton, Director of the Hunter Public Health Unit of New South Wales, presented a topical paper on a sentinel site for foodborne illness in the Hunter region. The program is designed to capture as much information as possible on the epidemiology of foodborne disease with the intention of extrapolating it to the whole Australian population.

A summary provided by Dr. Dalton follows.

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Prepared by Keith Richardson and Beverley George
Food Science Australia
PO Box 52, North Ryde 1670. Tel +61 2 9490 8397 Fax +61 2 9490 8499
Email enquiries@csiro.au