Report says food-borne illnesses hit kids hardest
With the Senate expected to consider food safety legislation that gives the FDA additional oversight and enforcement powers, two organizations have turned a spotlight on the issue.
Poll and research data released today from the Make Our Food Safe Campaign and the Center for Foodborne Illness look at the long-term impacts of acute food-borne disease [Summary | Full report] and what the public thinks should be done to improve safety. The Center for Foodborne Illness says its report demonstrates the need for the reform of what it calls America’s “broken” food safety system.
According to CFI’s report, long-term effects are most likely to hit children, the elderly and the immune-suppressed.
The Make Our Food Safe campaign polled four states (Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Ohio) and found support for the federal government enacting new food safety measures, such as:
- Report tests that show contamination
- Tracing system
- Standards for produce growers
- FDA mandatory recall authority
- Equal food safety standards for imports
- Broad access to food company records
- FDA inspections every 6-12 months
The Make Our Food Safe campaign is a coalition of public health organizations, consumer organizations, and groups representing the families of victims of food-borne illness, including the American Public Health Association, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Consumers Union and others. The Center for Foodborne Illness is a nonprofit organization funded by donations from individuals and corporations, including one that specializes in food safety products and services, as well as the Produce Marketing Association and ConAgra foods.
Related
Doctor suggests reforms to stop foodborne illness
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dennis G. Maki, M.D. takes a look at foodborne illness, the sources of recent outbreaks and official attempts to control the food-based spread of pathogens.
Once again, we must ask ourselves how foodborne disease can develop in 76 million residents of one of the world’s most technically advanced countries each year, causing 350,000 hospitalizations and 5000 deaths and adding $7 billion to our health care costs, despite intensive regulation of food production and distribution.
Industrial food production and importation, the American fondness for eating at restaurants and centralized distribution have helped to multiply the damage caused by any single outbreak, Maki said.
Maki suggested several possible measures to combat the spread of foodborne pathogens:
- Requiring bar codes for all commercial food so its origins and contact points can be quickly and easily traced.
- Changing the feeding practices of cattle, poultry and swine and reduce reliance on practices like anti-microbial food supplements that may promote the growth of harmful bacteria.
- Improving hygienic food-preparation practices in homes, restaurants and hospitals and giving local health departments the power and means to monitor these practices.
- Irradiating high-risk foods because “the CDC has estimated that irradiation of high-risk foods could prevent up to a million cases of bacterial foodborne disease each year in North America.”
Related:
Fatal Food: A study of illness outbreaks
Thomas Hargrove of Scripps Howard News Service wrote about foodborne illness outbreaks in a 2007 article for AHCJ. He found that some states did a good job of diagnosing and tracking down the causes of outbreaks, while other states “are virtually blind in detecting outbreaks of food illness.”
-
Join us in Omaha to find untold rural health stories
New at HealthJournalism.org
- AHCJ offers financial data about nonprofit hospitals
- Diversity in aging: Putting gray in the rainbow
- Southeast journalists eligible for regional fellowship program
- AHCJ-NLM Health Journalism Fellowship offers hands-on medical research training
- AHCJ announces 2011 winners of top health journalism awards
