21 hours Ago By Joe Whitworth
Seven people fell sick in a Salmonella outbreak in Australia in 2024 after eating kangaroo meat. A Salmonella Muenchen outbreak occurred in August 2024 after consuming wild hunted kangaroo in the Northern Territory (NT). Of the seven people who shared the food, all became ill; three were confirmed and four were probable cases.
The median age was 32 with a range of 23 to 65 years old and six were male. The median incubation period was 24 hours but ranged from 6 to 30 hours. The main symptoms were diarrhea and abdominal pain.
Two people were admitted to hospital overnight but all cases recovered. According to a study published in the journal Communicable Diseases Intelligence , all seven cases knew each other and consumed the same meal – a single, locally hunted and butchered kangaroo. Salmonella Muenchen is not uncommon in the Northern Territory.
Between 2014 and 2023, 87 notifications were received. A 2017 Salmonella Muenchen outbreak in the state with 22 cases was linked to hunted turtle meat. Multiple exposures Kangaroo meat is a staple food of Australia’s First Nations people and has become popular amongst non-Indigenous Australians in recent decades.
Kangaroos are known to harbor Salmonella. At the end of August 2024, the NT Centre for Disease Control was alerted to a possible outbreak of salmonellosis among people who had consumed wild hunted kangaroo. It was detected while investigating routine salmonellosis notifications; three cases separately attended the Alice Springs Hospital emergency department and clinicians reported they were from a larger group who had consumed hunted kangaroo.
There was no environmental inspection of the site where meat was butchered due to its remoteness and no leftover kangaroo meat was available for microbiological sampling. A large red kangaroo was killed on the evening of Aug. 24 by three hunters.
The carcass was left in the back of a pick-up truck until it was cooked rare in an earth oven the following morning and eaten by the hunters. The site where the kangaroo carcass was left overnight had temperatures far above the 5 degrees C (41 degrees F) recommended for safely storing raw meat. Meat was then transported at temperatures approaching 35 to 37 degrees C (95 to 98.
6 degrees F), which is the optimal growth conditions for Salmonella, and two further cases ate it on Aug. 25. The uncooked organs of the kangaroo were washed and refrigerated with the remaining meat.
On the morning of Aug. 26, internal organs were boiled with the rare meat and sent to a second household where two more people ate it and fell sick. Estimated outbreak cost Nine people in the second household ate a stir-fry meal that contained the kangaroo meat but it was cooked thoroughly and none of them became unwell.
Researchers estimated the cost of the outbreak to be close to AUD $10,000 (U.S. $6,300) consisting of: pain and suffering, non-fatal productivity losses, and direct losses, such as healthcare costs, medications, diagnostic testing, and pharmaceutical costs.
Contamination likely occurred during evisceration/butchering and was exacerbated by temperature abuses during storage and transport and insufficient cooking of meat. Soap and water was not available at the remote site where the kangaroo was cleaned, eviscerated and left overnight. “To prevent contamination of hunted kangaroo meat, hands and knives should be cleaned with soap and water.
Hands and knives should be washed regularly while butchering an animal, to avoid contaminating the carcass. Butchered meat should be stored and transported in a clean environment below 5 degrees C (41 degrees F) in order to reduce the risk of contamination. It is advisable to cook kangaroo meat completely through to 72 degrees C (161.
6 degrees F) to ensure killing of all microbes,” said researchers. (To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here .).
