U.S. Food safety no longer getting better

Doug Powell of the Food Safety Network passes along this story from the New York Times about the lack of improvment in recent food safety stats. From the piece by Gardiner Harris:

The report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, demonstrates that the nation’s food safety system, created when most foods were grown, prepared and consumed locally, needs a thorough overhaul to regulate an increasingly global food industry, top government health officials said Thursday.

“The system needs to be modernized to address the challenges and changes of the globalization of the food supply and rapid distribution chains,” said Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration. “F.D.A. needs to do more inspections

Produce is a more important contributor to the overall problem than it used to be,” said Dr. Tauxe, referring to spinach and other foods regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.
The disease control centers’ report said that in 2008, 16 of every 100,000 people in the United States had laboratory-confirmed cases of salmonella infections. That translates into about 48,000 serious illnesses, since individual stool samples are generally sent to laboratories only when someone is suffering a severe bout. In 2005, the figure was 14 people per 100,000, or about 42,000 cases of laboratory-confirmed salmonella infections

TK: Here is coverage from the Washington Post on the same topic. :here is the link to the CDC press release about the report. From that release:


“This year’s report confirms a very important concern, especially with two high-profile Salmonella outbreaks in the last year,’’ said Robert Tauxe, M.D., M.P.H, deputy director of CDC’s Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases. “We recognize that we have reached a plateau in the prevention of foodborne disease and there must be new efforts to develop and evaluate food safety practices from the farm to the table. The foodborne division at CDC is planning to increase the capacity of several health departments so that outbreaks can be better detected and investigated.

TK: DP also passes on this link from CIDRAP with news about the FDA and states forming rapid response teams for foodborne disease response. From that story:

At a press conference today to announce the annual FoodNet report, David Acheson, MD, the FDA's associate commissioner for foods, said six states—California, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and North Carolina—have received FDA grants to establish rapid response team pilot programs. The federal support enables states to set up the infrastructure for outbreak response teams incorporating both federal and state investigators.
"This will allow us to move more quickly when there is a response," Acheson said, adding that the FDA hopes to expand the program to three more states.