Comment by The_suffocated
7 years ago
The interviewee in the news report you've mentioned was probably cherry-picking. She said that "the number of laboratory-confirmed cases of illness dropped from more than 18,000 in 1993 to just 459 in 2010", but that 459 figure is most likely an outlier. According to Annual Epidemiological Report for 2016: Salmonellosis (https://ecdc.europa.eu/sites/portal/files/documents/AER_for_...), there were 8K to 10K confirmed Salmonella cases per year in the UK from 2012 to 2016.
On the other hand, according to Galiş et al. (2013), "Control of Salmonella Contamination of Shell Eggs—Preharvest and Postharvest Methods: A Review" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1541-4337.1...), vaccination of chickens against Salmonella is _banned_ in Ireland. Yet, the country has the second lowest incidence rate of Salmonellosis (5.6-7.1 cases per 10K population over the five-year period 2012-2016, second only to Portugal) among all countries in the EU. In contrast, the incidence rates in the UK over the same period were significantly higher (12-15 cases per 10K).
Why are the Irish figures so low? Perhaps the Irish eat fewer eggs than the others. Perhaps most Salmonella infections are due not to eggs, but to other contaminated foods or poor kitchen hygiene. While vaccination of chickens against Salmonella is effective against egg-based Salmonella infection alone, without a detailed breakdown of numbers, we cannot tell what's its impact on the overall incidence rate.
You can look at the study she's referencing to the interviewer. It's pretty persuasive. Take a look at Figure 1. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/56/5/705/347767
I'm not saying that the only way to control Salmonella is vaccination, but it is clearly an extremely effective method.