CDC shows lower count on food illnesses

There may be fewer foodborne illness in the country than we previously thought — almost 40% less, in fact. It's not that the numbers of foodborne 
illnesses have suddenly decreased, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says its ounts have become more precise.
Since 1999, the CDC has listed the number of cases of foodborne illnesses in the USA each year as 76 million, with 325,000 hospitalizations and 
5,000 deaths — numbers the food industry had at times disputed. Now, after almost a decade of work, the CDC is releasing new estimates and 
they're 37% lower — 47.8 million cases of foodborne illness, 127,000 hospitalizations and 3,030 deaths.
The new numbers reflect what CDC officials say is improved surveillance, better criteria for determining an actual food-related case, and exclusion 
of international travel-related illnesses.
The numbers are still too high, says Christopher Braden, director of CDC's division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases.
"That's one out of every six people, or 48 million total, getting sick from eating food in the United States each year, and that's something we don't 
want to see," he says. The numbers come from two papers published Wednesday online in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. The first 
looks at foodborne illnesses based on major pathogens such as norovirus and salmonella.
The second looks at those from "unspecified agents." The only way for officials to tie an outbreak to a known pathogen is when the victim visits a 


doctor and has a stool sample tested and the results are reported to the state. That rarely happens with foodborne illnesses, Braden says.


The new estimates are lower than in 1999 for several reasons:


•CDC officials no longer include people who were only vomiting for a day or who only had one or two episodes of diarrhea. Real foodborne illnesses 


cause symptoms that last longer.


•CDC's surveillance is much more comprehensive than in 1999.


The new figures are long awaited in the food industry, which believed the previous numbers to be too high.
The new estimates were encouraging, says James Hodges, president of the American Meat Institute Foundation, a meat industry group. "The new 
data tell us that our food safety strategies have been working." However, "even one foodborne illness linked to meat and poultry products is cause for concern."
The numbers are important because they form the foundation of much of the nation's food safety policy.
The Food and Drug Administration issued a release Tuesday saying it was implementing science-based measures to better combat foodborne 
illness. "We are moving down this path as quickly as possible under current authorities but eagerly await passage of new food safety legislation 
that would provide us with new and long overdue tools to further modernize our food safety program."