Sawyer says she hopes researchers and environmental groups will use the new, publicly available database to identify potential points of contamination in their own communities.
Under pastoral production of suusa, factors such as unknown udder health, plastic milking and storage containers, milking personnel practices like tying the quarters to prevent suckling by the calf and dusty milking environment, and lack of water may act as points of contamination (Mulwa et al., 2011).
And there are several points of contamination along the supply chain -- growing, harvesting, packing, storage, transport, distribution and processing -- all the way to the consumer's kitchen, where simply cutting the melon can transfer pathogens to the edible parts of the fruit.
The study identified environmental points of contamination and protective and risk factors for contamination.
Therefore, source investigations in chocolate-outbreaks should include extensive sampling in the production environment to increase the likelihood of determining possible points of contamination.
We used a Geographical Information System (GIS) to derive detailed and aetiologically relevant indicators of environmental sources and points of contamination.
Surfaces, including human hands, which come in contact with whole or cut produce represent potential points of contamination throughout the total system of growing, harvesting, packing, processing, shipping, and preparing produce for consumption.
The finding of a dominant strain probably represented the local endemic strain, but laboratory or point-of-collection contamination could not be entirely excluded.
