There’s good news and bad news regarding the latest estimates for foodborne illness. The good news is that the incidence of E. coli and listeria sicknesses has declined significantly. The bad news is that salmonella has not subsided, and 48 million people are still getting sick from digesting contaminated food. That’s one in six Americans.
Of those who fall ill after consuming food, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 people die. These estimates were released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and they include data from 48,000 people who participated in a survey.
These new figures are the first to be released by the government since 1999, when a much smaller survey indicated that 76 million Americans were affected each year by food borne illness, 325,000 people were hospitalized, and 5,000 lost their lives.
But the medical community cautioned that the food processing industry and government regulatory agencies should not pat themselves on the back. The 1999 study involved only about 12,000 study participants, and the numbers may not have been as accurate as those provided by the latest study.
On top of that, little headway has been made in terms of learning more about salmonella, and preventing it. Salmonella is the most common form of foodborne illness, and it caused about 28% of the deaths and about 35% of the hospitalizations caused by known pathogens. A pathogen is defined as any disease-producing agent, especially a virus, bacterium, or other microorganism.
Salmonella bacteria caused this year’s massive egg recall, and the bacteria were also blamed for a widespread recall of peanut butter in 2009. Hundreds of people were sickened during these outbreaks. Salmonella’s biology is complex, according to researchers, and the sources and transmission routes of salmonella are not fully understood. This is why the bacteria should be at, or near, the top of the list for food-safety regulators and researchers the next several years.
The acting director of the CDC’s Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases said 500,000 cases of foodborne illness can be prevented every year if the incidence of food-related sicknesses was decreased just one percent.
Many feel that the government does not do enough to prevent the illnesses through monitoring and penalties for lapses in safety. In fact eDrugstore reported that the U.S. Senate voted last month to initiate a complete overhaul of the U.S. food safety system. You can read the full story as reported by Reuters as well.
Hopefully the changes in oversight and regulation help to alleviate a problem that many Americans agree should not to exist on such a large scale.
The complete results from the recent food borne illness study can be found in the online edition of the CDC’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
We specialize in providing our over 1,000,000 customers with relevant product and condition information created by our professional editorial staff which includes our team of medical writers, medical practitioners, and health educators. eDrugStore.com Staff on Facebook