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FDA Consumer, July-August, 1992 by Marian Segal

Marian Segal is a member of FDA's public affairs staff.

Contaminated Food Causes Flight Fatality

A Valentine's Day airplane flight last February ended in tragedy, not because of a crash, but because its crew served a dinner that caused a deadly illness--cholera.

A 70-year-old man died, and 75 other passengers on Aerolineas Argentinas Flight 386 became ill with cholera several days after the plane landed in Los Angeles, Calif. Most had eaten a shrimp salad investigators suspect was contaminated with cholera bacteria.

The flight originated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and picked up the shrimp salad from a caterer in Lima, Peru, where cholera is epidemic, before continuing to Los Angeles.

After heating about the food poisoning on the local news, investigators from FDA's Los Angeles district office took quick action to make sure cholera would not spread from the discarded airline food to the city.

The investigation began when area hospitals reported four cases of cholera to the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. All were passengers on Flight 386.

Cholera is a potentially fatal intestinal disease spread through water, food and ice contaminated with feces carrying cholera bacteria. It rarely spreads from person to person and is easily prevented with modem sanitation. The disease is epidemic in South America, with 400,000 cases reported since 1990.

Because cholera is infectious, the county health department notified the airline, the California Department of Health Services, and the national Centers for Disease Control. FDA investigators in Los Angeles worked jointly with those agencies, sending a team to inspect the caterer disposing of meals amving on international flights.

"Our objective was to ensure that cholera could not spread from the meals, water and ice remaining on the plane," said FDA investigator Jon Polzine.

Polzine and two FDA scientists, microbiologist Robert McDonald and entomologist (insect specialist) Tom Sidebottom, visited the county health department the morning of Feb. 20 to gather information.

Working in 14- to 16-hour shifts, the health department and CDC had begun tracing the passengers and crew members on board the plane to ask them what they had eaten on the flight and to test them for cholera.

The FDA investigators focused their attention on how the leftover food from Flight 386 was handled and discarded.

On Feb. 21, the investigators went to the Aerolineas Argentinas Western Regional Headquarters in Los Angeles to collect a list of passengers and crew members, a menu of meals served on the flight, and several Argentine certification documents attesting to the safety of the food on board.

When another flight from Buenos Aires arrived at the airport that evening, Polzine, Sidebottom and McDonald went on board to collect samples of the meals, ice and water. They wanted to see if this flight, too, was carrying cholera bacteria.

In pursuit of all possible contamination routes, Sidebottom looked for insects on the plane that may have transmitted disease. He found nothing alive, but scraped some dead bugs off the light fixtures.