Foodborne Illness Down Even Before the FDA Starts Further Regulating

The Centers for Disease Control released new figures on the prevalence of foodborne illness in the United States. And there is good news. Previous CDC reports regularly estimated that 5,000 Americans died of foodborne illnesses and that 325,000 were hospitalized annually. The new CDC estimates find that 3,000 Americans die of foodborne illness and 128,000 are hospitalized. This means that your chance of dying of foodborne illness is just a bit over 1 in 100,000 per year, and your chance of being hospitalized about 1 in 2,500.

Congress just passed the Food Safety Act giving the FDA vastly more power to regulate food production. It will be interesting to see if the rate of decrease in foodborne illness speeds up.