Let's take a logical approach to this situation.  Now for something to be an epidemic I am assuming there is a simple mathematical formula based on incidence per person or rate of it spreading.  This is neither an epidemic or not an epidemic based on how some one might choose to feel about the situation.
Secondly, what should DOH be doing here? Advocating for a mass genocide of rats and slugs with chemicals?  Telling people not to go to any restaurants with local produce and cripple local farmers and restaurants perhaps the point of bankruptcy? I'm not exactly what the DOH can do other than advise proper food storage and washing that everyone should be doing.  In some ways this is like a disease that only people who don't wash their hands after using the bathroom contract.  So then everyone who uses prudent clean practices should be fine while those that do not  are at risk.