An article recently published in Eurosurveillanceprovides an analysis of a 2021 multinational foodborne illness outbreak investigation involving imported melons contaminated by Salmonella Braenderup in order to exemplify collaboration across countries, rapid information sharing, and harmonized data collection, including key lessons learned, to potentially form the basis of standard practices in multinational outbreak investigations.
At present, there is no standard approach to the often resource-intensive multinational outbreak investigations for food and waterborne diseases. However, the 2021 outbreak of S. Braenderup linked to melons shows that collaboration across countries, especially when supported by a global organization, can help solve outbreaks more rapidly through the sharing of genomic data and strengthening of conclusions where findings differ. Organized cooperation can also help conserve resources by distributing the workload between countries.