Foodborne Illnesses Cost U.S. $77 Billion per Year
A recent 33-page report from the American Association of Justice has found that foodborne illnesses, which affect 48 million people and kill over 3,000 annually, also costs the U.S. about $77 billion per year. The group also claims that food companies’ ongoing industrialization of farming is only making food supplies more susceptible to contamination.
“Factory farms’ intensive use of pharmaceuticals in livestock is associated with the rise of antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs,’” the report says, “and the vast amounts of waste produced contaminates groundwater and nearby crops to the extent that leafy green vegetables, like spinach and lettuce, are now the second-most frequent cause of food-related hospitalizations and the fifth-most frequent cause of food contamination death.”
David Ratcliff, the author of the report, is also concerned with how often these foodborne illness outbreaks occur. The study covers such outbreaks as the 2015 listeria outbreak involving Blue Bell Ice Cream which killed three people; Foster Farm’s salmonella-contaminated chicken, which may have affected up to 18,000 people according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC); and the listeria outbreak from cantaloupes in Colorado’s Jensen Farms which killed 33 and infected 147.
The report also addresses the federal government’s “fragmented oversight” of food safety; for example, shelled eggs are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), while liquid egg products are regulated by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Sausage casings are regulated by the FDA, while sausage meat is regulated by the USDA.
Ratcliff asserts that the problem of adulterated food has not received the attention it deserves, though raising awareness is always an ongoing endeavor. “We’re focused on so many other things when it comes to food – gluten, calories, and GMOs (genetically-modified organisms). There’s a sense it (foodborne illness) won’t happen to us,” he said.
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