Government shutdown worst-case scenario realized: Salmonella outbreak - Tarini Parti and Helena Bottemiller Evich - POLITICO.com

The outbreak has sickened 278 people in 18 states. | AP Photo

A multi-state Salmonella outbreak is exactly the scenario food safety advocates and lawmakers warned about when the federal government was forced to shutdown last week.

Now that nightmare has come true, though the federal agencies charged with arresting foodborne illnesses are scrambling to make due.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is operating with about one-third of its staff on the job during the shutdown, confirmed Tuesday that it has now brought back 30 furloughed employees in its foodborne division to help handle the outbreak, which has sickened 278 people in 18 states.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service — which is operating with 87 percent of its staff during the shutdown — issued a public health alert Monday evening saying that raw chicken products produced by three Foster Farms facilities in California are the likely source of the outbreak. However, no recall has been ordered because health officials say they don’t have enough information to name the specific products.

What’s most concerning about the outbreak is that it involves seven strains of Salmonella Heidelberg that are resistant to antibiotics typically used to treat the illness, Barbara Reynolds, spokeswoman for the agency, told POLITICO. Of those sickened, 76 people have been hospitalized — an usually high rate.

The outbreak is exactly what food safety advocates and several lawmakers earlier feared.

“I can’t tell you what might be missed while the CDC is shut down,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said in an ominous floor speech last week.

“Important programs like protecting public health are going by the wayside. Our food safety is in danger,” warned Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).

With thousands of its employees furloughed, CDC’s ability to monitor and maintain its surveillance system for the 30 clusters of illnesses it was already tracking took a major hit. CDC had just one person instead of eight monitoring important pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria, as POLITICO previouslyreported.

Nancy Donley, founder of STOP Foodborne Illness, a food safety advocacy group, said the shutdown is the last thing the public health system needs, especially after agencies have already weathered significant spending cuts under the sequester. Overall, CDC was forced to cut $285 million of its fiscal year 2013 budget due to the sequester.

“Whenever you get in a situation where public health agencies, which are already stretched to begin with, have their funding restricted, things fall through the cracks,” said Donley.

The “perceived imminent threat” posed by the latest outbreak, however, has allowed CDC to bring its foodborne division back to normal capacity to keep an eye on the outbreak at hand as well as others that have not received attention during the shutdown, Reynolds said.

But there are still several unanswered questions that CDC and FSIS are investigating.