About 1,600 people in the US get sick from Listeria infections each year. Listeria is the 3rd leading cause of death from food poisoning. At least 90% of people who get Listeria infections are either pregnant women and their newborns, people 65 or older, or people with weakened immune systems.

We are one of 10 participating state health departments in a program called FoodNet (http://www.cdc.gov/foodnet/index.html), a sentinel surveillance system for foodborne diseases, working in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC’s) Emerging Infections Program (http://www.cdc.gov/ncezid/dpei/eip/index.html), US Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Services (USDA-FSIS) (http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/home), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (http://www.fda.gov/food/newsevents/ucm1236341.htm). We also participate in CDC’s Foodborne Diseases Centers for Outbreak Response Enhancement (FoodCORE) (http://www.cdc.gov/foodcore/index.html), a CDC sponsored network of state and local health jurisdictions that work together to develop model practices for outbreak response, including Listeria outbreaks.

We conduct surveillance for all residents with Listeria infection. Interviews are conducted by FoodNet and FoodCORE staff to obtain information on exposures that might lead to infection. The state laboratory determines the molecular subtype of every isolate