A salmonella outbreak that has left hundreds of people sick in the Netherlands and the U.S. has been traced to smoked salmon, health authorities stated Tuesday.
The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) said the salmon has been traced to Dutch company Foppen, which sells fish to many major Dutch supermarkets and to stores around the world, including the United States.
The institute said in a statement that around 200 people — and likely more — in the Netherlands and more than 100 people in the U.S. have been sickened.
Foppen also estimated the number of infections was higher, and said this was “probably the tip of the iceberg” to the BBC.
Company spokesman Bart de Vries said that since the company set up a public information phone line two days ago, some 1,400 people had called and around 350 of the callers “reported symptoms consistent with a salmonella infection.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, salmonella is a type of bacteria that passes from the feces of people or animals to other people or animals. It causes an infection called salmonellosis, the source of 1.4 million cases of food-based illness and 400 deaths each year.
