Abstract

The food people eat can sometimes make them ill. If two or more people become ill after eating the same food, this is regarded as an outbreak caused by a food-related pathogen. A total of 838 such outbreaks, affecting 3,517 people, were reported in 2021. This is a clear increase compared with the figures for 2020 (559 outbreaks affecting 1,907 people) and also an increase compared with 2018 and 2019 (735 and 756 outbreaks affecting 2,805 and 3,058 people respectively). Although norovirus, Salmonella and Campylobacter were still responsible for most outbreaks and illness reported in 2021, the occurrence of norovirus was reported far less than in previous years for the second year in a row.

The figures above were obtained from the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (Nederlandse Voedsel- en Warenautoriteit (NVWA)) and the Municipal Health Service (GGD), both of which register and investigate food-related infections and poisonings. When doing this, they try to identify what people have been infected with and by which pathogen, within the limits of their particular fields. The Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority inspects premises where food was prepared or sold or where it came from. It asks Wageningen Food Safety Research (WFSR) to ascertain whether food contains pathogens. The Municipal Health Service focuses on people who may have contracted an infection via food and tries to establish the nature of the infection via the individuals in question. The object of this approach is to avoid more people falling ill by removing the product from the market or taking measures to ensure the same situation from happening again.

The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) combines the reports received from the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority and the Municipal Health Service and analyses them as one whole. This offers insight into the causes of food-related outbreaks in the Netherlands, their prevalence and possible changes to their prevalence over the years. The figures above are an underestimate of the actual number of food-related outbreaks and illnesses. There are a number of reasons for this. For example, the fact that some people do not go to their general practitioners or do not notify the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority if they become ill. It is also not always clear whether contaminated food is the reason why someone has become ill.