Workers cleared in check

Press, 19 October 1976, Page 6

Workers cleared in check

The Department of Health and Ministry’ of Agriculture in Christchurch do not consider the public are at risk after the report on Friday that a female worker at a meat by-products factory has been infected with salmonella, an infectious bowel disorder.

The woman was working in the sausage casing division of Canterbury ByeProducts, Sockburn. When her illness was diagnosed a,s salmonella, she was told to go home and the other 24 workers in the division were screened by the works’ doctor.

Dr L. F. Jepson, Medical Officer of Health in Christchurch, said yesterday that the screening tests on the other workers all proved negative, and no other workers were sent home. The infected worker had not yet been cleared and the source of the infection had not been traced. A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture said that salmonella was a common inhabitant of the small intestine of livestock. He said that the sausage casing division of Canterbury Bye-Products was separate from the abattoir.

There was no danger to the public from possible contamination by the woman, as the casings were mostly for sausages, and underwent heat sterilisation during treatment.

Last year 720 cases of salmonella were reported to the Department of Health, 116 of them in Christchurch. This made it the worst affected centre in New Zealand for this type of notifiable disease.