Foodborne Illnesses Are Down In Last Decade

Even though widespread foodborne illness outbreaks seem to make the news more than they used to, individual cases of food poisoning are even more common.

About 48 million people -- one in six Americans -- get sick from tainted food. Most of these cases go unreported.

On the other hand, about 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die each year from foodborne diseases, according to new estimates from the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says the figures are the most accurate to date due to better data and methods used. The data are published Wednesday in two articles in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

The papers provide the most accurate picture yet of what foodborne pathogens are causing the most illness, as well as estimating the proportion of foodborne illness without a known cause. The reports are the first comprehensive estimates since 1999 and are CDC's first to estimate illnesses caused solely by foods eaten in the United States.

"We've made progress in better understanding the burden of foodborne illness and unfortunately, far too many people continue to get sick from the food they eat," said CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden. "These estimates provide valuable information to help CDC and its partners set priorities and further reduce illnesses from food."

Better data

CDC's new estimates are lower than in the 1999 report. The difference is largely the result of improvements in the quality and quantity of the data used and new methods used to estimate foodborne-disease.

For example, it is now known that most norovirus is not spread by the foodborne route, which has reduced the estimate of foodborne norovirus from 9.2 to approximately 5.5 million cases per year. Because of data and method improvements, the 1999 and current estimates cannot be compared to measure trends.

CDC's FoodNet surveillance system data, which tracks trends among common foodborne pathogens, has documented a decrease of 20 percent in illnesses from key pathogens during the past 10 years. However, these FoodNet pathogens make up only a small proportion of the illnesses included in the new estimates.

Of the total estimate of 48 million illnesses annually, CDC estimates that 9.4 million illnesses are due to 31 known foodborne pathogens. The remaining 38 million illnesses result from unspecified agents, which include known agents without enough data to make specific estimates, agents not yet recognized as causing foodborne illness, and agents not yet discovered. In both the 1999 and current estimates, unspecified agents were responsible for roughly 80 percent of estimated illnesses.

"Foodborne illnesses and deaths are preventable, and as such, are unacceptable," said Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. "We must, and can, do better by intensifying our efforts to implement measures that are prevention-oriented and science-based. 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."

Slow-moving legislation

That legislation, the Food Safety Modernization Act, has been moving slowly through Congress for a year and a half. While the House passed the measure in July 2009, the Senate only gave its approval November 30, in the current lame duck session of Congress.

Efforts are underway to reconcile the two versions before the end of the year. If efforts fail, the process will have to start all over in the 112th Congress in January.