Re: [97attendees] Food poisoning

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Aaron,

FWIW, having spend some time talking and working with experts in
food protection (both from public health and what is broadly
called architecture), I tend to agree with Shane and father.

In addition, unless there are fundamental problems with the food
and/or water supply that no one is dealing with, most actual
cases of food poisoning are very local to particular
establishments or food preparers. Probably not a good idea to
condemn an entire city on that basis, at least unless there are
a lot of cases, good data, and/or evidence that local health
authorities just don't care (which is, of course, different from
lack of proof that they do).  To future complicate the
statistics, it is common for the population in some areas to
develop resistance to local varieties of irritating but not
particularly dangerous "bugs" (and chemicals) while visitors to
the area have problems -- it is not an accident that popular
slang terms for badly upset digestive systems by visitors to
many areas are variations on the local term for "tourist".
Issues like that go on Shane's list of "confounding factors"
--safe for locals may not be safe for some visitors.

Incidentally, while the vegetarian advice is probably good, one
gets full protection that way only if one peels and/or washes
one's own vegetables in water whose safety is known and/or
observes other precautions.  :-)

best,
   john


--On Monday, November 21, 2016 09:41 +0800 Shane Kerr
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> Aaron,
> 
> I would caution against the IETF embarking down the road of
> trying to do ad-hoc public health screening. We have no
> expertise in this area, and our sample size is small, the time
> frame of an IETF meeting is smaller than the potential
> lifetime of food poisoning, and there are so many confounding
> factors that we are unlikely to get any valid results.
> 
> My father worked in public health for 30 years or so - he was
> a food inspector for the US Army. I remember once he told me
> that about half of cases of food poisoning were actually from
> food poisoning, and the other half were non-food-related.
> Contrariwise a lot of food poisoning goes unreported because
> it is mild or contains symptoms similar to other ailments.
> Humans are even harder to diagnose than computer networks, it
> turns out. ;)
> 
> Certainly the IETF can and possibly should consider reviewing
> records and recommendations about all health in potential
> destinations - not just food safety but also other potential
> health problems. (I don't follow the meeting selection process
> so it is possible this is already on a checklist.)
> 
> As a final note, you can avoid all problems with seafood,
> poorly cooked meat and the like by eating vegetarian. ;)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> --
> Shane