Salmonella outbreak tracked by shopper cards

What do you think - good thing or bad? Can certainly see the good use, but what if used for the wrong reasons? A witch hunt of sorts...

Health authorities in the U.S. have for the first time used department store credit cards to help trace the source of a recent salmonella outbreak that left hundreds of Americans ill.

Investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were scrambling to find the source of the outbreak when they hit upon the idea of tracking grocery purchases of those who became ill.

With permission from the patients, health authorities followed the trail of grocery purchases to a Rhode Island company that makes salami, then zeroed in on the pepper used to season the meat.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/03/12/consumer-salmonella.html#ixzz0iFhw2XUI