It goes without saying that ingesting contaminated food is a very bad thing – but when it happens at the annual Food Safety Summit it's a disaster.

Chicken Marsala was the lunch of choice for the majority of attendees at the 16th annual Food Summit held at the Baltimore Convention Center on April 8-10, 2014. As it turned out, however, the entree was contaminated with Clostridium perfringens (C. perfringens), a spore-forming gram-positive bacterium commonly found on raw meat and poultry, reports Food Safety News. 

"When we learned that attendees to the Food Safety Summit were ill after attending the 2014 event we fully cooperated with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene regarding this matter and assisted them with their investigation as requested," the organization said in a statement distributed by spokesperson Amy Riemer.  "We have continued to do so in the past six months while the investigation was conducted and the final report was being prepared." 

The 216 afflicted individuals reported diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea, headaches, chills, vomiting and fever, and a report on the incident was released yesterday.

The next Food Safety Summit will be held on April 28-10, 2015. Riemer also said on behalf of the organization that they will work with the convention center and catering company prior to next year's event to avoid another food contamination.