You probably use social media on your spare time. For public health and food safety agencies, a simple tweet can be a key piece in putting together the puzzle of a food poisoning outbreak.
Often, when someone eats at a restaurant and gets sick, they write about it on the internet. If there is a “peak” of posts on websites and social media from people with complaints of vomiting, diarrhea or other symptoms of food poisoning, the system can issue an alert to health authorities. Data can also be sent to hospitals to prepare them for the high demand for care.
In addition to mapping the places where the outbreak has already occurred, it is also intended to create an early warning system with this same method. Early warning includes several social networks, even a photo posted on Instagram can reveal bad eating habits in home-cooked meals. A photograph of a rare meat can be the harbinger of a future illness.
Another focus of this type of monitoring is to understand the cultural eating habits that can get us into trouble. Last year, the FSA (Food Standards Authority), the authority responsible for regulating food standards in the United States of America, issued guidelines to the population to stop washing raw chicken meat before cooking it. Contrary to popular belief, this habit helps bacteria to spread through meat and increases the likelihood of contamination for those who consume it.
In England, Twitter was already used to detect outbreaks of norovirus, which causes the “stomach flu”, two weeks before the public health department admitted the epidemic outbreak had occurred. The software also analyzed the hashtags most used by patients and found a series of smaller outbreaks of the same virus throughout the year. If they treated before the contamination spread, fewer people would be affected.
Even if technology saves us from a hospital stay, let’s do our part for food safety: before cooking, wash your hands well, do not wash chicken!
Article originally published on my column at website Noctula Channel on 12/03/2015 and published here on 05/07/2022. The texts I wrote and didn’t publish before, I’m publishing now with some additional content, but always preserving the original. A lot has happened in the last few years that have changed the course of my life and this blog. To learn more about this long absence, click here.
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