Genetic Database of Bacteria Aims to Track Food-Borne Illness

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Friday, July 13, 2012

Genetic Database of Bacteria Aims to Track Food-Borne Illness 

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

WASHINGTON — A new public database aims to catalog the genetic codes of 100,000 types of bacteria found in food, vastly increasing the amount of data that scientists can use to trace the causes of food-borne illness.

The free database, being set up at the University of California, Davis, will enable scientists to pinpoint not only what food carries the bacteria responsible for a given outbreak — raw tuna in sushi, for example — but also what country it came from. And while responses to such outbreaks have typically taken weeks, the new database is expected to reduce that to days.

“It’s actually a big deal from a scientific standpoint,” said Steven M. Musser, the Food and Drug Administration official who announced plans for the database on Thursday.