Each year in the United States, an estimated 9 million people become ill, 56,000 people are hospitalized, and 1,300 people die from foodborne illness caused by known pathogens. These estimates help highlight the magnitude of this public health problem. However, to develop effective prevention measures, food safety agencies and partners must understand the types of foods that contribute to the problem.
The Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC) is a group of three agencies created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS). By bringing together data from CDC, FDA, and USDA-FSIS and developing sound analytical methods, IFSAC scientists can improve estimates of the sources of foodborne illness.
Using outbreak surveillance data from 1998 through 2022, IFSAC reports annual estimates of the rates of foodborne illness attributed to 17 food categories for Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157, and Listeria monocytogenes.
- Salmonella diseases arose from a wide variety of foods. More than 75 percent of Salmonella illnesses were attributed to seven food categories: chicken, fruit, seeded vegetables (such as tomatoes), pork, other produce (such as nuts), beef and turkey.
- Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157 diseases were usually linked to two categories. More than 85 percent of Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157 diseases were associated with row crops (such as leafy vegetables) and beef.
- Listeria monocytogenes (Listeria) diseases were most often associated with dairy products, vegetable crops and fruits. More than 75 percent of illnesses were attributed to these three categories, but the rarity of Listeria outbreaks makes these estimates less reliable than those for other pathogens.
Attribution estimates for Campylobacter are not presented in this year’s report. Evidence suggests that the sources of Campylobacter outbreaks are likely to differ significantly from the sources of non-outbreak-related illnesses caused by this pathogen. IFSAC is investigating alternative approaches to estimating the sources of Campylobacter diseases.
IFSAC derived the 2022 estimates in the same way as previous estimates, with some adjustments. The original methodology, which dates back to the 2012 estimates, was described in a report, a peer-reviewed journal articleand at a public meeting.
The data in this year’s report came from 48,375 illnesses linked to 1,355 foodborne illness outbreaks that occurred between 1998 and 2022, with each confirmed or suspected food involved assigned to a single food category. The method is most dependent on outbreak data from the past five years (2018-2022).
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