High cost of food-related illness

An estimated 76 million people in the United states are sickened annually by foodborne illnesses. Some cases are minor and cause only minor discomfort. Many are far more debilitating, and lead to about 5,000 deaths and about 325,000 hospitalizations each year. The cost of the illnesses is substantial. A new study puts the cost of the acute forms of the illnesses at about $152 billion a year in healthcare, worksite and other economic losses.

That's a substantial financial burden that is exacerbated by the physical and emotional toll associated with such illnesses. Food-borne pathogens -- e. coli, salmonella and listeria are perhaps the most well known of them but there are dozens of others -- increasingly infect the nation's food supply. A recall last week of a wide range of processed foods -- including soups, snack foods, dips and dressings -- recalled after salmonella was discovered in a flavor-enhancing ingredient is the latest in a long list of such incidents.

Earlier high-profile recalls included, among other items, tainted meat, lettuce, spinach, eggs, peppers and peanuts. In each instance, the nation's food system failed to adequately protect the public. The failure is systemic. The Food and Drug Administration, responsible for enforcing U.S. food safety law, is a hidebound agency handicapped by antiquated laws, inadequate funding, shortages of trained personnel and years of politically-inspired mismanagement.

Recent outbreaks of food-borne illness -- which strike children disproportionately -- have prompted a public outcry and a demand for federal regulations to strengthen the FDA. Legislators, thankfully, have responded to consumers in positive fashion..

A bill that includes useful reforms, including a mandatory system to trace illnesses back to a food's origins; to step up FDA inspections of food processing plants (one source reports they now are inspected on average only once a decade); and to give the FDA expanded authority to issue food recalls passed the U.S. House last year. It is now in the Senate. The new report on the ubiquity and cost of food-borne illness should expedite passage.

It is hard to ignore the information presented in the new study, published by the Produce Safety Project, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts,. The report offers a unique perspective on a specific group of illnesses by providing data on both the medical costs and quality-of-life losses associated with food-borne illness. Those costs are mind-boggling.

The national figure of $152 billion annually is staggering. Tennessee's annual cost for food-borne illnesses is estimated at about $3 billion dollars. Georgia's is estimated to be about $4.8 billion. Food safety reform is the best way to address the problem and to reduce the human and financial costs associated with the illness. There's no reason for the senate to delay passage.

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