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Comment by cm2012 | Hacker News Reader

cm2012

EU average rate of Salmonella is 23 per 100k people, USA is 16 per 100k. So it appears the USA way works better.

UK Laboratory reports per 100,000 population - 23.82 in 2006, and generally decreasing, lowest 12.63 in 2014[1]. US average - 13.1 per 100k (range 11-15, depending on year)[2]. I suspect the difference is not eggs, or if it is it's negligible.

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4689500/

Salmonella comes from a variety of sources. I don't see how you can reach your egg conclusion based on overall rates.

Food:

Contaminated eggs, poultry, meat, unpasteurized milk or juice, cheese, contaminated raw fruits and vegetables (alfalfa sprouts, melons), spices, and nuts

Animals and their environment:

Particularly reptiles (snakes, turtles, lizards), amphibians (frogs), birds (baby chicks) and pet food and treats.

https://www.foodsafety.gov/poisoning/causes/bacteriaviruses/...

Quite a bit more data on the EU in this report from the EFSA [1]. Search for "salmonellosis".

In short, there's a lot more going on that just eggs.

One interesting factoid is that in Finland, the egg production chain has been virtually salmonella free for decades. Cases of salmonellosis are mostly contracted abroad, the most common source being tourist trips to Thailand.

[1] https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa...

Sorry, do you have some source data for that? Is the difference entirely attributable to the way eggs are stored and processed, or are the Europeans getting salmonella from other sources? It is my understanding that the US and EU have fairly different agricultural regulatory frameworks.

On mobile, I googled some papers, but it would be too annoying to go back and copy paste. You can confirm these pretty quick though.

Not sure but I suspect the EU to have larger regulatory variance among member countries, as well as likely overall lower cost barriers to obtaining a diagnoses.

The _confirmed_ incidence rates in years 2015 and 2016 are 14.85 and 14.51 (cases per 100000 population) in the USA, and 21.0 and 20.4 in the EU. Sources:

* National Enteric Disease Surveillance: Salmonella Annual Report, 2016

https://www.cdc.gov/nationalsurveillance/pdfs/2016-Salmonell...

* Annual Epidemiological Report for 2016: Salmonellosis

https://ecdc.europa.eu/sites/portal/files/documents/AER_for_...

However, the incidence rates vary widely among European countries. Portugal had very low (< 4) incidence rates over the period 2012-2016, while the figures in Czech Republic over the same period were ridiculously high (around 100).

In the UK, where eggs sold on shelves apparently are required by law _not_ to be washed, the incidence rates in 2015 and 2016 are 14.6 and 15.1, which are on par with the US figures.

Does salmonella go under-reported in the USA due to healthcare not being free at the point of use?

I think a lot has to do with folks in the US being more OCD about cleaning their food. For example, most people in the US would never eat cheese that was crawling with visible mold and bacteria but the French prefer it that way (so I was told by a French friend. he said cheese must have 'the bugs')

To say nothing of factors other than the type of food consumed, there are many other foods beyond eggs that could give someone salmonella...

That seems like a pretty small difference…

I was about to say the same...but I also wonder what the breakdown is based on cause. Maybe in the US egg based cases are practically 0 and other things like salads are higher. Hard to tell just based on this number alone.

There's also the big difference that raw egg based products are readily available in most European countries while in the US those same dishes do not use raw egg. Friends in the US are always blown away when they try chocolate mousse or home made tiramisu.

~50% higher incidence is a small difference? In the US that would be an extra ~23,000 cases of salmonella.

There's also issues of whether all of these differences can be accounted by eggs or reporting techniques.

So it appears the USA way works better.

Does it? Both the UK and EU mandate that hens be vaccinated against salmonella. This step pretty much eliminated eggs as a carrier of salmonella.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/business/25vaccine.html

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-amundsen-egg-was...

Europeans probably eat raw meat and eggs more often than Americans. Beef tartar isn't a dish that's commonly found on menus state-side. Is it even legal to serve a raw egg yolk in California?

1- salmonella is not due to eggs only, but meat and vegetable also

2- you probably read in the article like all of us that chicken in Europe are vaccinated against salmonella, while this is not mandatory in the US

Therefore I am not sure how you reach this conclusion.

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