Reporting food poisoning in Des Moines

Do you live in Polk County Iowa? Have you ever suspected you had food poisoning and wondered how to report it? I’ll show you how.

This year food poisoning is in the news on a daily basis; unfortunately in my household we may have had our own personal brush with a foodborne illness.

Four weeks ago two of us got sick about 12 hours after eating - same restaurant; same menu items; same symptoms; same timing; same sense of which food was responsible. When I Googled the symptoms, the hits displayed said salmonella, salmonella, salmonella, salmonella, which is much in the news although its exact sources are still a mystery. Here is what they are saying:

• CDC
• Associated Press (You Tube video as seen on Google news; go to +video)
• Globe and Mail (an opinion piece from Canada)
• Arizona Republic (on-line)
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (on-line)
• seattlepi.com (on-line)

The Center for Disease Control (CDC), our federal watchdog agency, knows it is very important to track and record outbreaks of food poisoning in order to discover and eliminate the source. Thus once I was back on my feet, I started my quest to report two suspected cases of food poisoning. I Googled “report food poisoning” and “Des Moines Iowa.” Lots of hits but not one hit was relevant to reporting food poisoning in Des Moines.

I perused the web sites of the Health Department of Polk County and the Department of Health of the State of Iowa. I didn’t find even the slightest suggestion of a place to report food poisoning.

Lacking information, what better place to start than the Polk County Health Department? I went to the web site on a Saturday, found a contact address, and sent an email with information. I got a call back on Monday informing me that the Polk County Health Department “has nothing to do with that; call the State Department of Inspections.” When I asked if the county keeps records of such outbreaks, I got an instant  reply, “Do you want the number or not?” As Steve Martin used to say, “Well, excuuuuuse me!!!!”

In contrast, my reception at the State offices was helpful, cordial, and to the point. Judy Harrison is the Bureau Chief for Food and Consumer Safety for the State of Iowa. When she found out that I wanted information, she called me back promptly. Between Bureau Chief Judy Harrison, Administrative Assistant Terri Duden, and the website I know exactly how to report suspected food poisoning.

How to report food poisoning in Polk County

Go directly to File a Complaint with the Proper Agency.

(If you were starting from the State of Iowa web site you would have to go through a series of pages State of Iowa, Health and Human Services, Agencies, Inspections and Appeals, Informed Dining, View an Inspection Report, before you would get to where you want to be which is File a Complaint with the Proper Agency.)

Once on the File a Complaint with the Proper Agency page, you can enter the appropriate food source (restaurant for example), minimal information (a single word is sometimes enough) about the establishment (restaurant) name, or address, or city, or county, or ZIP and the database will return Search Results, most likely a specific restaurant. By selecting the establishment (restaurant) name in the search results you are directed to a page on which you can really report your illness (on a page also called File a Complaint). This complaint form will ask for your name, phone number, date of visit (to the restaurant), and a description of your complaint. Once submitted, a proper regulatory authority will investigate.

The question that I asked Bureau Chief Judy Harrison was, “How does the reported data get translated into identification of the origin of an outbreak of food poisoning?” The answer? The individual reports make their way to the Iowa Department of Health and they do the epidemiology. I especially like the word origin as noted by Wikipedia: epidemiology, “the study of what is upon the people…”, that is, what sort of plague has beset the people and where is it headed? If you really want to know about epidemiology of infectious disease, check out the lecture materials in an open course from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.  At a national level the epidemiology is done by CDC, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. You will find current information on Salmonella, West Nile Virus, Fluoridation, and the 2008 Olympics (plus lots more).

And finally something you might not want to know: CDC estimates there are 76 million cases of foodborne illness per year in the U. S. Most but not all are trivial. Several are considered more serious, e.g., Salmonella, E. coli, hepatitis A.

So now you know how to report foodborne illness in Polk County, Iowa. I hope you don’t have to.

photo on Flickr by Aleutia.

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James is James G. Lindberg (Jim) is the Purple Wren’s sweetie and is a visiting chemistry professor at Grinnell College and retired from Drake University.
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