You’ve seen the statistics – CDC estimates that each year in the US, 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne disease – likely often enough that they barely register anymore. But for those charged with food safety, the statistics are important and are much more than simply numbers.
Take, for example, CDC’s updated estimates on the illness episodes caused by seven major pathogens, showing that more than half the illnesses were caused by norovirus, with about a third caused by Campylobacter and a quarter by Salmonella – which also caused the most deaths. It’s not difficult to discern that such statistics illustrate where the industry should be putting its food safety efforts. Of course, every sector, establishment, and product is different, and these statistics don’t differentiate between these or even between industry vs. home contamination, but with 90% estimated to be domestically foodborne, it is essential to know the potential of each in your environment and/or products and ensure their control.
In fact, a fundamental reason CDC spends time calculating the statistics is because they can be used as a basis for attributing illnesses to specific food categories, then for allocating resources, prioritizing interventions, and informing policy. Additionally, although illnesses linked to these pathogens are reported to state public health departments, large numbers are not routinely reported due to a lack of a confirmed microbiological diagnosis. Thus, CDC periodically updates its estimates by adjusting for undercounts in surveillance data illnesses.
These estimates, updated to 2019 from the previous data of 2011, showed that 37.6 million estimated episodes of illness were caused each year by just the seven pathogens: Campylobacter spp., C. perfringens, invasive L. monocytogenes, norovirus, nontyphoidal Salmonella and STEC infections, and T. gondii. Of those, the estimated impact of each per year between 2016 and 2019 were:
- Norovirus caused the most illnesses (5.5 million) resulting in 22,400 hospitalizations and 174 deaths.
- Although nontyphoidal Salmonella infection caused the third most illnesses (1.3 million) and hospitalization (12,500), it caused the most deaths (238).
- Campylobacter was second in all areas, causing 1.9 million illnesses, 13,000 hospitalizations, and 197 deaths.
- L. monocytogenes had the lowest number of illness (1,250) but nearly all resulted in hospitalizations (1,070) or death (172).
- STEC caused 357,000 illnesses, 3,150 hospitalizations, and 66 deaths.
- C. perfringens caused a higher number of illnesses (889,000) but resulted in the lowest number of hospitalizations (338) and deaths (41).
- T. gondii caused 848 hospitalizations and 44 deaths.
While the numbers of estimated domestically acquired foodborne illnesses in this study are higher than those published in 2011, a number of factors likely contributed to this, including the availability of data and methods; new regulations and other interventions to prevent foodborne illness; and the increased use of culture independent diagnostic tests which have improved the likelihood of identifying pathogens which might otherwise have not been detected.
Food establishments have a lot to deal with in today’s environment, but the seriousness of pathogenic contamination shown by the updated statistics portrays how critical it is to continue addressing this as a priority in both hazard analysis and control.
While we continue to pay attention to the microbiological risks, it is important to recognize that these risks are much easier to identify and link to foods than chemical risks. As we all recognize, risks from chemicals are much more difficult to attribute and to understand given the nature of long-term exposure impacts versus short-term and more immediate impacts of ingesting Salmonella or E. coli O157:H7, but we must not lose focus on chemical risks either. This is especially true today as the new Administration is much more focused on driving down chemical risks than microbiological risks.
All written content in TAG articles, newsletters, and webpages is developed and written by TAG experts, not AI. We focus on the realities and the science to bring you the most current, exacting information possible.
