Hundreds Get Food Poisoning at Food Safety Summit 2014

food poisoning, food safety summit 2014

(Getty)

Attendees at the 2014 Food Safety Summit in Baltimore, Maryland got a taste of irony when the chicken marsala served later tested positive for C. perfringens, causing a massive streak of diarrhea among goers.

According to Food Safety News:

Attendees at the popular conference were from 42 states, Canada, Mauritius and Costa Rica. The local health department learned of the illnesses not from the organizers of the event, the convention center, or the caterer, but from calls by attendees to the city’s 311 service.

According to a report by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the illness was caused by Clostridium perfringens (C. perfringens), a spore forming bacteria that affects meat and poultry. It commonly causes diarrhea.

The Food Safety Summit released a statement saying that this is the first time in its history that such a thing has happened and that it was working with its caterers to ensure that it wasn’t repeated in 2015.