Can Google Improve Food Safety?

Bar GraphA pilot project currently in development at Google will enable health officials to spot outbreaks of deadly food borne illnesses 7 to 10  days faster than the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) current system.

Google accomplishes this by tracking queries entered into its search engine by people who are trying to find information on symptoms and sicknesses they’re experiencing.  Google has already launched Flu Trends, which tracks search queries like “flu symptoms” and identifies geographic areas where those queries are spiking.

The data Google collects matches the flu trends published by the CDC, suggesting Google’s information is accurate.  Now Google is planning to apply this system to E. coli and salmonella outbreaks so that the source of the contamination can be contained much more rapidly than it is today.

Seems like a great idea, right?  Not everyone is so excited.  Privacy advocates have already raised the alarm, warning that any database that collects and tracks the behavior of such a large number of free citizens will inevitably lead to abuse.

Google counters that this information is for the greater good and that individuals will remain anonymous.  Of course, anonymity has been promised before when it comes to large databases and it seems like there’s always a leak.  Just ask the thousands of Americans who have had their financial information compromised by leaks and hacks in the past two years.

For the food service industry, Google’s trend tracker could be a double-edged sword.  Of course, food safety is always a primary concern for restaurateurs.  But what if Google, in the admittedly honorable process of identifying a contamination source, starts naming restaurants frequented by people who are getting sick?  Those businesses would be dead and gone in a matter of minutes, regardless of the level of responsibility they deserved for the outbreak.

So where should such a powerful tool draw the line?  And where is Google planning on drawing that line?  The technology is still so new it’s impossible to tell yet, but as the data  we enter into the world’s most popular and powerful search engine gets used to track our behaviors, the conflict between privacy and information seems more and more inevitable.

About Greg McGuire

Greg has blogged about the food service industry for years and has been published in industry magazines, like Independent Restaurateur and industry blogs like Restaurant SmartBrief. He lives in Colorado with his wife and two sons and enjoys reading, live music, and the great outdoors.

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One comment

  1. With all the recent food borne illness outbreaks any type of advanced warning like the one Google is trying to offer could be very helpful. A system like this, especially when endorsed by the CDC, should be supported. Privacy advocates are just being ridiculous. What’s really interesting is if you click the link above to the privacy advocate’s blog you will see three “Ads by Google” at the bottom of their post. These ads are fueled by a technology that places relevant ads based on the content of the article. If a reader clicks through the ads and makes a purchase the blog owner gets a commission from the purchase. Seems like the privacy advocates are criticizing Google in their article and then trying to make some money using their technology on the same page. If one is really that worried about their privacy, there’s an easy solution to the problem: Don’t use Google for search.

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