Salmonella becoming more common is US

Even though the overall incidence of salmonella in general has fallen, it still continues to rise, according to Richard Raymond, the Agriculture Department undersecretary for food safety.
Many different salmonella bacteria make people sick, but salmonella enteritidis is one of the most common. It causes fever, stomach cramps and diarrhea. In vulnerable people, infection become deadly by spreading beyond the intestine to the bloodstream.
At one time, eggs became contaminated with salmonella on the outside from contact with fecal bacteria, but in recent years, the salmonella enteritidis strain has been found inside intact, disinfected, grade A eggs. This type of germ contaminates eggs inside a hen’s ovaries, before shells are even formed.

Now the germ is turning up in broiler chickens according to research by the Agriculture Department. A recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study on food poisoning from salmonella noted that the risk of illness from salmonella enteritidis increased the less people ate at home.

“This measure may, in fact, be considered to be a proxy for eating a larger number of commercially prepared meals,” the CDC found. That study said that while overall infections from salmonella were lower than in the mid-1990s, infections from salmonella enteritidis were 25 % higher.