Aanika Biosciences, a Brooklyn-based biotechnology company that says it’s able to quickly identify the source of foodborne contaminations—or pathogens—by using genetically engineered bacterial spores that cling to food. Their spores contain DNA barcodes that can be “scanned” to identify a food’s origin, down to a plot of land on a farm. But food safety experts are skeptical that the technology will be widely adopted, citing privacy concerns for farmers and fears of food tampering by consumers.

If Aanika’s spores were to be rolled out at scale, they could help speed up foodborne outbreak investigations that, today, are logistical nightmares. After a large romaine lettuce outbreak in 2018 led to nearly 100 hospitalizations, the FDA wrote in a statement that their investigation required the collection and evaluation of thousands of records “to accurately reproduce how the contaminated lettuce moved through the food supply chain to grocery stores, restaurants and other locations where it was sold or served to the consumers who became ill.” It took the FDA roughly six weeks to identify the California counties responsible for the outbreak.

During their investigations, the FDA also interviews people who got sick to identify common foods that might be responsible for their illnesses. Documents go missing, though, and people don’t always remember what they ate yesterday, let alone last week. The source for most foodborne outbreaks is never solved, according to a 2019 study.

Foodborne diseases also kill about 3,000 Americans every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Besides the cost of life, the investigations that result—as well as the product recalls and damage to a company’s public image—can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a USDA estimate. Maybe Bhuyan’s technology could alleviate some of that damage, and help to quickly identify the farmers responsible for an outbreak.

Read the full article about tracing food-borne illness  by Niko McCarty at The Counter.