Source: CNN
The term “foodborne illness” was coined over the past few decades. Yet humans have been infected by cryptic-sounding pathogens like Campylobacter jejuni, Escherichia coli O157, Listeria monocytogenes, and Cyclospora cayetanensis for centuries and beyond.

“The first description that we have of symptoms associated E. coli 0157 infection goes all the way back to the Bible,” said Mansour Samadpour, a microbiologist and food scientist at the University of Washington. “These are not new bacteria by any stretch of the imagination. What is new is our proclivity for quantifying how we co-exist with these gnarly pathogens.

A new report by the Produce Safety Project at Georgetown University estimates that the health-related cost of foodborne illness in the U.S. at $152 billion per year (see state by state breakdown from the group Make Our Food Safe here).

As it turns out, $152 billion is nothing to scoff at.

“This is a problem,” said Robert L. Scharff, the study’s author and former economist with the Food and Drug Administration.

The gravity of the problem begins to sink in when it is compared to previous cost estimates of foodborne illness, which ranged from $6.5 to $35 billion per year, according to government data compiled by the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety.

This new report casts a wider net. It includes obvious things like the financial cost of medical care, loss of life and missed workdays; also less-tangible costs like pain and suffering, and costs to others in society.

The Make Our Food Safe Coalition - a group of ten public health and consumer organizations - considers this new report fodder for more stringent food safety laws.

According to the group: “Continued outbreaks of foodborne illness over the last several years - from spinach to peppers to peanut products - have demonstrated that these outbreaks are not random, unpreventable occurrences, but are due to widespread problems with our food-safety system.”

For a scientist like Scharff, the numbers are a tool, a remedy of sorts.

“The value of these numbers is to look at what type of benefits we can attain if we prevent these illnesses,” said Scharff, currently an assistant professor in the Department of Consumer Sciences at Ohio State University. “If we invest $10 billion in a program that reduces illness by 10 percent, then cost savings to society would be $15 billion, so that would pass a cost benefit test.”

The numbers most people care about: 76 million cases of foodborne illness each year, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Numbers do not lie, and what they suggest is that foodborne illness is an ongoing problem.

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My Take: Consider this announcement among one more to add to the growing list of reasons for creating your own vegetable garden at home and going vegetarian, if possible. The rapid-fire way in which our food is processed, packaged and delivered to your local market is enough to make you wonder. But what happens inside those food packing plants stays inside food packing plants for the most part, and we often take our lives into our own hands when we buy certain types of foods, especially fresh vegetables that are packaged for the supermarket chains.

If you live in Pennsylvania and get your meat over the border in Maryland, who do you answer to when you find out you’ve bought tainted meat? You’re better off with a Montgomery County PA criminal lawyer to help you go up against the big supermarket chains, because they are well-armed against big lawsuits. It isn’t the same as when you try to sell junk cars, or make custom birth announcements. This is the food we eat and the risks can be life-threatening if we are not careful about what we eat, who makes it and how it’s handled along the way. If you do want to junk a car you might consider calling the local Salvation Army and donate it. The proceeds are used to cover many localized charitable organizations who care for the indigent and mothers in need, some of whom can barely afford formula and clothes, let alone fancy baby announcements.

Speaking of Pennsylvania, if you are in the state and you need to find a reputable Montgomery County PA juvenile law attorney, try the folks at attorneysdelivered.com, which offers a pretty extensive, state-by-state resource guide for legal representation.

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