Alongtime industry colleague and friend recently told me it was the things he couldn't see that he feared most. Lurking somewhere in his processing equipment or on a product sitting in a sales cooler, there are a few colonies of pathogenic bacteria waiting to wreak havoc in our business and lives. Over the past decade, foodborne illness outbreak surveillance has improved significantly. As a result of improved surveillance, more illnesses are being identified, and more outbreaks are being reported. Byextension, many of these outbreaks are being associated with an increasing number of food products, ranging from waffles to cookie dough, and more companies are being affected. While these improvements have had an overall positive impact on public health, they have also had a tremendous—and sometimes less than positive—impact on the food industry. Indeed, thousands of "spotlights" are continuously crisscrossing the nation, searching for problems in our food products. They take the form of verification testing by processors, mcoming product testing by customers, regulatory sampling by federal inspectors, and patient isolate testing ordered by concerned physicians. With such vast resources dedicated to looking for problems in today's food, the question is not if your product will be caught in the spotlight, but when.
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