How Multinational Data-Sharing, WGS Solved a Foodborne Illness Outbreak Investigation
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CIFA) recently provided insight into how whole genome sequencing (WGS) and international data-sharing helped trace a 2020 multinational food safety outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes to enoki mushrooms, enabling countries to rapidly recall the affected products.
WGS is a tool that can be used to map out the DNA of pathogenic bacteria found in food, allowing scientists to compare bacteria from a food sample to samples obtained from infected people or other contaminated food. Bacteria that are closely related based on WGS are referred to as a "match" and are more likely to have originated from the same source. Such information can be useful in foodborne illness outbreak investigations.