FDA Sees Surge In Food Poisoning     

Dietary changes, imports pose risk 

New York Times 18mar01

[For more on irradiation of food - See The Food That Would Last Forever (1993) in Food Index]

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.

More Food Choices, More Concerns
Americans are getting stomach ailments more often than they did 30 years ago and food recalls are on the rise, both signs that the FDA, the nation's primary food inspector, has too much to do. One example of the problem that the FDA faces: While the number of food items being imported each year is rising, the number of inspectors for those imports has remained relatively constant.

Average number of months Americans go without having a gastrointestinal illness.
'48-'57       21
'65-'71       23
'96-'97       16

Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration
 New York Times Graphic