The outbreak is said to be linked to sausage meat made in South Africa by Enterprise Foods, at a company factory located in Polokwane, Limpopo. This is particularly worrying because Enterprise Foods currently accounts for about 28.2 percent of all processed meat sales in South Africa. Over 16 samples from this factory have tested positive for the listeriosis monocytogenes strain ST 6, which is said to be a more virulent strain. The general population in southern Africa is advised not to eat any processed meats and stores are urged to take all foods from Enterprise and other South African processed meats from their store shelves.
This isn’t the first time Namibia has had issues with contaminated meats, however. Reuters has claimed that there have been over 900 cases of listeria poisoning since January of 2017. Listeriosis has also been notoriously difficult to test for (it does not distribute homogeneously throughout a meat sample) and can hide in the nooks and crannies of factory machinery. It has an incubation period of approximately three weeks and tends to affect young children and the elderly. It is an especially scary risk for pregnant women because they can pass it on to their babies even if they exhibit no symptoms.
This could be something to watch out for when we go to Namibia, since the outbreak seems to be an ongoing issue throughout the whole southern part of Africa. Essentially, we should avoid any processed meats if possible.
~ Elizabeth
Apparently during the Madagascar trip, everyone at some point had some sort of food poisoning / stomach issues from the meat. I'm sure it's bound to happen to us. Hopefully it's nowhere near the severity of this point, but let's not get too worried if we all feel sick on the trip.
ReplyDelete-Mark Buckup
Don't forget to bring immodium! But also if we can't eat processed meats or fresh meats... what do we eat?
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