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Food Borne Illness: Causes, Symptoms, What to Do

Foodborne illnesses usually result from some combination of poor foodhandling practices during some phase of the food production or food preparation chain such as inadequate cooking, improper cooling or refrigeration, improper hot and cold holding, cross contamination, and inadequate hand washing by food handlers. Foodborne illness occurs in homes, schools and commercial food operations.

 Remember, people usually believe that their illness may have been caused by the most recent meal. In actuality, the responsible food was often eaten at a previous time (12-24 hours before).

Talk with your doctor if you are severely ill, have a high fever, blood in your stool, or if your illness lasts longer than one or two days. If you have reason to believe that your illness was acquired from food at a restaurant or other commercial food source, call the health department in the county where the restaurant is located (La Plata County: 247-5702; Archuleta: 264-2409) or email us. The staff will collect information from you to try to determine what type of illness you may have, where you may have acquired it, and from what type of food. They will do an inspection of a facility which is suspected to have caused illness.