SF Gate News
Tapeworm and
botulism have been all but eradicated in the United States, and
new technologies, from freeze-drying to irradiation, have been
developed to make food safer.
But because
of changing eating habits and more choices of foods, Americans
may be more likely to get sick from what they eat today than they
were half a century ago.
The frequency
of serious gastrointestinal illness, a common gauge of food poisoning,
is 34 percent above what it was in 1948, according to the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Not all scientists
agree -- some say food poisoning is as common as it was in the
immediate postwar years -- yet there is no doubt about the scale
of the problem.
Every year,
according to the disease control agency, 5,000 deaths, 325,000
hospitalizations and 76 million illnesses are caused by food poisoning.
One of those
sickened was 7-year-old Taylor Lake Holt of Anchorage, Alaska.
Taylor, a cancer patient who had just ended a yearlong ordeal
with chemotherapy in 1999, celebrated with a smoothie made with
unpasteurized Sun Orchard orange juice. Within a day, he had to
be taken back to the hospital, where it took him four days to
recover.
The juice,
it turned out, contained salmonella. The company later explained
that it had met rising demand by bringing a tanker truck of unpasteurized
orange juice, chilled with contaminated ice, from Mexico. The
company and regulators agree this probably caused an outbreak
that infected more than 400 people. One elderly man died.
Why, in an
age of technologies that make food safer, is food poisoning at
least as common as it was a half-century ago?
For one thing,
Americans are eating more fresh fruits and vegetables without
cooking them, increasing the chance of infection through bacteria
or viruses. People also are eating more precooked foods, such
as seafood salads and deli meats, which are more dangerous than
sit-down meals served right off the stove or out of the oven.
What is more,
the variety of foods available has expanded considerably faster
than the government's ability to inspect them. Over the past decade,
grocery stores have doubled the number of items they stock from
every corner of the world, some carrying new organisms that scientists
still cannot identify, much less find ways to control.
In fact, the
amount of contaminated food that reaches store shelves only to
be recalled for posing health risks has reached its highest level
in more than a decade.
Amid the proliferation
of foods, the Food and Drug Administration's resources to scrutinize
them have scarcely changed, often making consumers the first to
test a product's safety. A healthy person can withstand most infections,
but older people have weaker immune systems, and the U.S. population
is aging.
Foodmakers
say many contaminated food products recalled last year, from batches
of moldy Gatorade to ammonia-tainted ice cream, did not pose serious
threats to health. They also say the industry has made progress
in making food safer. In fact, the illnesses caused by contaminated
juice came in spite of stringent new FDA rules for juicemakers
that were imposed after earlier outbreaks. Sun Orchard, an Arizona
company, already had increased safety by steam-cleaning oranges
and bathing them in chlorine to kill bacteria.
Still, the
U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that 85 percent of food
poisoning cases arise from the fruits, vegetables, seafood and
cheeses that are regulated by the FDA and claim a larger share
of the American diet each year. And the FDA has fewer than one-tenth
of the inspectors of the Department of Agriculture, which regulates
meat and poultry suppliers. The FDA increasingly relies on food
companies to keep their factories clean and their products safe.
With slightly
more than 400 inspectors to ferret out violations in 57,000 plants
across the nation, the FDA inspects food manufacturers about once
every eight years.
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