In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Link: Food-borne illnesses remain steady
Opinion & Analysis: To worry, or not to worry?
Background: The salmonella scare, the FDA’s food inspection program
Related Topics: Korea’s beef with American meat; homemade cheese and TB
Reference: Food-borne illness information and prevention
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Gregory Bull/AP
Tomatoes sit for sale at Central de Abastos market in Mexico City. In response to the
recent salmonella outbreak, major Mexican tomato growers have stopped shipments
to the United States while U.S. authorities investigate the outbreak. (AP)
Tomatoes sit for sale at Central de Abastos market in Mexico City. In response to the
recent salmonella outbreak, major Mexican tomato growers have stopped shipments
to the United States while U.S. authorities investigate the outbreak. (AP)
Despite Recent Scares, Food-Borne Illnesses Not on the Rise
The recent salmonella outbreak has restaurants, supermarkets and consumers avoiding tomatoes. But is our fear of food warranted?
30-Second Summary
Following a salmonella outbreak linked to tomatoes that sickened 228 people in 23 states, many restaurants and grocery stores have pulled tomatoes from their menus and shelves.
Meanwhile tens of thousands of South Koreans are protesting meat imports, and homemade cheese is spreading tuberculosis in California. Highly publicized outbreaks like these may make the frequency of such illnesses appear to be increasing, the incidence of food-borne illnesses in the United States has stayed fairly constant over the past decade, says Martin Weidmann, an associate professor of food science at Cornell University.
Food safety experts maintain that people are more likely to be involved in a car crash than become ill from eating vegetables, reports the New York Daily News.
For those avoiding the produce aisle, the good news is that politicians are leaning on the Food and Drug Administration to improve food safety. “These continued outbreaks are unacceptable,” said Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as lawmakers investigated the salmonella-tainted tomato scare.
But columnist Marc Siegel and other skeptics say those concerned about their health should worry about more serious threats such as heart disease.
“Fear is still by far the biggest pathogen here, not salmonella,” Siegel wrote in The Washington Times. “The chance of your getting sick from sinking your teeth into a single tomato remains minimal, but it seems greater and greater the more media attention the problem gets.”
Meanwhile tens of thousands of South Koreans are protesting meat imports, and homemade cheese is spreading tuberculosis in California. Highly publicized outbreaks like these may make the frequency of such illnesses appear to be increasing, the incidence of food-borne illnesses in the United States has stayed fairly constant over the past decade, says Martin Weidmann, an associate professor of food science at Cornell University.
Food safety experts maintain that people are more likely to be involved in a car crash than become ill from eating vegetables, reports the New York Daily News.
For those avoiding the produce aisle, the good news is that politicians are leaning on the Food and Drug Administration to improve food safety. “These continued outbreaks are unacceptable,” said Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as lawmakers investigated the salmonella-tainted tomato scare.
But columnist Marc Siegel and other skeptics say those concerned about their health should worry about more serious threats such as heart disease.
“Fear is still by far the biggest pathogen here, not salmonella,” Siegel wrote in The Washington Times. “The chance of your getting sick from sinking your teeth into a single tomato remains minimal, but it seems greater and greater the more media attention the problem gets.”
Headline Link: Food-borne illnesses remain steady
Although the total number of reported cases of food-borne illness isn’t rising per year, there are new problems cropping up, such as new strains of bacteria that are becoming resistant to some antibiotics, reports the New York Daily News. But on the plus side, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is getting better at tracking random illnesses to one source through databases and DNA sampling, and the FDA can alert the public to problems faster, thanks to digital media.
Source: New York Daily News
Food-borne illnesses have remained constant in the United States since 2004, federal health officials said last week. While that means the illnesses aren’t on the rise, it also casts doubt into the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s goal of reducing the overall number of food-borne infections by 2010, reports Medline Plus.
Source: Medline Plus
Opinion & Analysis: To worry, or not to worry?
Columnist Marc Siegel writes that, “since over 700,000 people are dying of heart disease in the U.S. every year, and another 300,000 from stroke which is also the number one cause of disability, it is also worth considering what is most dangerous to our health: all the fatty meat we Americans eat that can lead to heart disease, or the rare healthy vegetable we ignore and then worry about—which can cause heart disease from the stress?”
Source: The Washington Times
An editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch contends that the U.S. food supply’s inspection system needs some work: “By now, it should be painfully obvious to consumers, grocers and farmers that the nation’s food safety system is in urgent need of retooling. It is fragmented, underfunded and lacks such common sense tools as the ability to track products and order recalls.”
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Background: The salmonella scare, the FDA’s food inspection program
The salmonella scare began when a substantial number of food poisoning cases were reported in Texas and New Mexico. At first, pinning down which tomatoes and states were affected was difficult. As the outbreak spread to new states, the FDA expanded its salmonella warning to include the entire nation. Fast food restaurants and grocery chains began pulling tomatoes from their menus and shelves.
Source: findingDulcinea
As investigators probed the recent salmonella outbreak, lawmakers said that U.S. health officials at the Food and Drug Administration have not followed through on a promise made last year to make the food supply safer. “To have (the FDA) come up and say they don't know what to do about it or how much money they need or what resources they require is a shame and a disgrace,” Dingell said.
Source: Reuters
BusinessWeek reports that the FDA wants to improve food safety standards, but finding the manpower is difficult: “In recent years the FDA has found itself with more and more to do: nutrition labeling, regulating dietary supplements, ensuring the safety of surging food imports. Yet since 2004 the agency has lost nearly a third of its food safety and field staffers, and many more are expected to retire soon. To check all the food production facilities around the world at the current rate of inspections would take 1,900 years.”
Source: BusinessWeek
Related Topics: Korea’s beef with American meat; homemade cheese and TB
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak recently faced 80,000 angry protesters when he announced plans to resume beef imports to South Korea from the United States. South Korea was the third-largest overseas customer for U.S. beef until it banned imports after a case of mad cow disease in 2003. Lee’s government said that it has asked the United States not to export beef from older cattle, which are considered at greater risk of the disease.
Source: Fox News
A nearly obsolete strain of tuberculosis is cropping up among Hispanic immigrants in Southern California who are consuming unpasteurized dairy products in the form of “bathtub cheese.” Families use milk from cattle in Mexico to make the cheese, where 17 percent of herds are infected with the bacteria.
Source: findingDulcinea
Reference: Food-borne illness information and prevention
The FDA includes a press release for consumers on its Web site, urging them not to eat raw red Roma, plum or round tomatoes unless the tomatoes are from one of the safe sources listed on the site.
Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides detailed information on food-borne illness, including specifics on the most common food-borne diseases and which foods are most commonly associated with the diseases.
Source: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service explains how cross-contamination of foods occurs and how to prevent the problem.
Source: United States Department of Agriculture
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