The Dalle Outbreak

In the fall of 1984 in The Dalles, Oregon there was a Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak that caused gastroenteritis in a total 751 people. There were two waves of the outbreak, the first being September 9th through the 18th and the second was September 19th through October 10th. An investigation of the outbreak determined that the origination of the outbreak was from 10 different restaurants and eating at their salad bars. During the epidemiological investigation, no water supply, single food item, or supplier or food distributor was common to all the affected restaurants. A later criminal investigation determined that the outbreak was intentionally caused by members of a religious commune contaminating the restaurant salad bars. In the …show more content…
First, we look at if a biological risk exists. “A biological risk is considered to be the presence of a political or terrorist environment from which a biological attack could originate” (Grunow & Finke, 2002, pg. 514). At the time of the salmonella outbreak, there was a controversial commune trying to build a national headquarters in The Dalles. This commune was known as Rajneeshpuram, and it was later confirmed that there were secret laboratories there. As confirmation of the laboratories and the biological agents inside were not made aware to the public until after the outbreak, the value of 1 was given to the first criteria. The next criterion is if there is the existence of a biological threat. This is determined if a group or persons openly threaten to use a biological agent. The members of the commune never made their plans known to intentionally make citizens sick until after the criminal investigation. Since these plans were not publicly known, a value of only 1 was given to this …show more content…
According to Grunow and Finke, the likelihood of a biological agent being used as a warfare agent can be divided into four levels, with the maximum of 54 points possible for the non-conclusive criteria. Level 3 is Highly Likely, with values of 51-54 points, Level 2 is Likely with values of 36-50 points, Level 1 is Doubtful with values of 18-35 points, and Level 0 is Unlikely with values of 0-17. Based on the criteria developed by Grunow and Finke, our value of 24 falls in to the category of Doubtful for an intentional release of a biological warfare agent. There are also the conclusive criteria mentioned above. If identification of the pathogen as a biological warfare agent is possible, then no other tests are needed. In the case of the salmonella outbreak in 1984 in The Dalles, Oregon, it was not known that it was an intentional attack until a criminal investigation discovered that was the case. At the time of the outbreak only the non-conclusive criteria could have been used to determine if it was an intentional release of salmonella, as the existence of the laboratories at the commune where the cultures were prepared was

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