Foodborne Illness Outbreak Environmental Antecedents 2017-2019

1,430 environmental antecedents (root causes) were reported from 393 foodborne illness outbreaks between 2017 and 2019. The data was collected by 24 U.S. jurisdictions and reported to the CDC's National Environmental Assessments Reporting System. It highlights specific factors like lack of employee oversight, training, and food safety culture that contributed to outbreaks.

Use Cases

• Analyze the frequency and distribution of reported antecedents, such as 'lack of oversight of employees' or 'lack of training', across 393 outbreaks to identify common failure points in food safety.
• Model the relationship between outbreak characteristics and specific antecedent categories reported by state and local health departments to predict high-risk scenarios.
• Investigate the co-occurrence of multiple antecedents, like 'lack of a food safety culture' alongside 'lack of oversight', within individual outbreak investigations to understand systemic root causes.

Strengths

• Contains 1,430 specific antecedent records linked to 393 distinct outbreaks, providing a substantive basis for analysis.
• Covers a defined three-year time period (2017-2019) from 24 reporting jurisdictions, offering temporal and jurisdictional scope.
• Includes quantified prevalence for top antecedents, such as lack of employee oversight at 89.1% of reported outbreaks.

Limitations

• The dataset's scope is limited to outbreaks investigated and reported by 24 participating jurisdictions, not a complete national census.
• Specific data fields, column structure, and file formats are not described, which may complicate initial data exploration.
• Data is static for the 2017-2019 period and may not reflect more recent trends or changes in food safety practices.

Provenance

Source

United States Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Collection Method

Data gathered from environmental assessments conducted by state and local health departments during foodborne illness outbreak investigations and reported to the National Environmental Assessments Reporting System (NEARS).

Time Range

2017 to 2019.

Freshness

Dataset metadata was last updated in February 2026, though the underlying data covers 2017-2019.

Geography

United States (24 reporting jurisdictions).