Is Foodborne Illness Increasing?

Washington, DCAccording to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), rates of foodborne illnesses have been holding steady for five years and have even been declining from the mid-1990s until the beginning of this decade, due mainly to improvements in the meat and poultry industry. And one report says that frequent outbreaks of foodborne illness have been increasing the awareness of food safety. So why has the US recently been plagued by food poisoning outbreaks?

On the one hand, government officials say that produce-associated food poisonings have been increasing and the outbreaks are larger, so the public perceives that food poisoning is getting worse. On the other hand, experts say the outbreaks are larger due in part to better testing and surveillance that have improved the government's ability to detect multistate outbreaks.
The following foodborne illness outbreaks occurred in 2008:

- A salmonella outbreak linked to hot peppers and tomatoes from Mexico sickened more than 1,400 Americans.

- Last year a peanut-related salmonella outbreak caused at least 690 confirmed illnesses in 46 states and was linked to nine deaths.

- A salmonella outbreak attributed to Honduran cantaloupes sickened 51 people in 16 states.

However, a CDC report said that outbreaks account for just a fraction of foodborne illnesses and only seven per cent of the salmonella cases were tied to identified outbreaks.

Foodborne Illness Safety Measures
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) and six other co-sponsors have introduced legislation to "dramatically improve the way the Food & Drug Administration protects the safety of the nation's food supply". Their aim is to give the agency new authorities and resources to reform the nation's food safety systems.

The legislation follows January's voluntary recall of Salmonella-tainted peanut products-- one of the largest food recalls in the nation's history that sickened hundreds of people nationwide.

The proposed legislation addresses some of the issues surrounding the peanut product recall by increasing the frequency of inspections at all food facilities; giving FDA expanded access to records and testing results, and allowing FDA to recall dangerous food products in the event a company fails to recall a product at FDA's request.

FDA officials say that more than 150 additional inspectors and more than 30 additional scientists and consumer safety officers have been hired in the past year. But is that enough manpower to fix what many critics believe is as a broken food system?