How to reduce your risk of foodborne illness and support permitted food vendors

September 6, 2024.Reading time 9 minutes.

Recently, we’ve seen an increase in the number of unpermitted mobile food vendors selling food in King County. We are urging people to avoid vendors operating without a Public Health permit for two reasons: 1) to protect yourself from potential foodborne illness and 2) to help support mobile vendors that are following food safety best practices.

Surge in communicable diseases, funding shortages threaten public’s health

July 17, 2017.Reading time 5 minutes.

If you’ve followed the Public Health Insider, you know that we’ve seen a surge of communicable disease outbreaks in places like schools, health care facilities, jails and restaurants. And those are just the most visible ones. As the local health department, it’s our mission and legal responsibility to track down and stop over 50 communicable diseases in […]

Public Health shares more foodborne illness outbreak information in 2016

January 22, 2016.Reading time 4 minutes.

We revealed our new process for sharing foodborne illness outbreak information with you.

Norovirus outbreak investigation in downtown Seattle building (UPDATED)

December 5, 2015.Reading time 6 minutes.

UPDATE 12/9/15 This morning, our food protection program staff re-inspected all of the food establishments in the building and cleared them to re-open. We are requiring the food establishments and building management to use a daily cleaning and sanitation log for the next 14 days. We are not collecting more data on the magnitude of the outbreak at this point. […]

You heard it here first: Changing our food borne illness public notification process

November 13, 2015.Reading time 8 minutes.

Since June, we’ve written in this space about a spate of food borne illness outbreaks that have kept all hands on deck here at Public Health – Seattle & King County and at times across the state – the salmonella outbreak connected to pork from Kapowsin’s slaughterhouse, the E. coli O157 outbreak linked to food […]

Multistate foodborne outbreak investigation, illustrated

November 4, 2015.Reading time 1 minute.

With the current E. coli outbreak unfolding in Washington and Oregon, it’s timely that the CDC has come out with a new report on multi-state foodborne outbreaks. The report lays out what can be done to better investigate these outbreaks and prevent them, whether you’re the local health department, a food producer, or a consumer. […]