Future challenges for tracking foodborne diseases

R egardless of where they get their information from, Americans are very likely to learn almost instantly when­ ever there is an outbreak of bacterial patho­ gens—Salmonella, Listeria, or the “bad” Escherichia coli—from contaminated food products. This is a huge achievement and a great benefit for public health: The earlier this information reaches consumers, the less people will be affected and public health and other authorities have more time to identify and contain the source of the outbreak. However, despite its contribution to public health, most Americans are not aware that a little-known government program called “PulseNet USA” detects nearly all foodborne outbreaks of pathogenic bacteria. This is a bit odd because PulseNet has not only been very efficient in detecting foodborne disease but has thereby positively impacted public health and saved millions of dollars since it was founded 20 years ago. PulseNet is now undergoing profound changes as it both expands internationally to protect consumers in other countries and invests heavily—financially and scientifi­ cally—in new technologies such as nextgeneration sequencing (NGS) to further improve its capacity to detect food contami­ nations.