On November 4, 2022, FDA announced that the Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC) had released its annual report on “Foodborne illness source attribution estimates for 2020 for Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157, and Listeria monocytogenes using multi-year outbreak surveillance data, United States.”

By way of background, IFSAC is a tri-agency group including FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS). Each year IFSAC analyzes foodborne illness outbreak data and specific foods that are responsible for them and releases that evaluation in an annual report. The reports are intended to help shape FDA’s priorities and keep stakeholders informed.

This years’ annual report found that Salmonella was caused by a variety of foods (including meats, fruits, and seeded vegetables), E. coli O157 illnesses were most often linked to vegetable row crops and beef, and that Listeria monocytogenes illnesses were most often correlated with dairy products, fruits, and vegetable row crops. Notably, attribution estimates for Campylobacter are not included in this years’ report. This is because Campylobacter outbreaks appear to differ from the sources of non-outbreak-associated-illness caused by the pathogen. FDA’s announcement notes that IFSAC is exploring alternative approaches for estimating the sources of Campylobacter illnesses.