An article today in Business Week by Steven Reinberg states that foodborne illnesses cost the United States an estimated $152 billion each year in health-related expenses.
"These costs are significantly more than previous official estimates, and it demonstrates the serious burden that food-borne illness places on society," Sandra Eskin, director of the Food Safety Campaign at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, D.C., said during a Tuesday press conference.
These health-related costs include physician services, hospital services, medicines and also quality-of-life losses, such as deaths, pain, suffering and disability.
According to federal statistics, it is estimated that each year 76 million Americans are sickened by contaminated food, with 5,000 of these illnesses becoming fatal.
Illnesses from well recognized pathogens play the largest role. For example, costs related to campylobacter exceed $18.8 billion annually; costs linked to salmonella are estimated at $14.6 billion; and costs related to listeria are $8.8 billion, according to the report.
And the majority of these foodborne illnesses are caused by produce, which are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Thirty-nine percent of E. coli outbreaks were due to produce regulated by the FDA.
It is hoped that the report will spur Congress to pass food safety legislation to strengthen the FDA's food safety efforts and give the agency more authority over the foods it regulates and more funding to make the food supply safer.
Please click here to read the full article.
No comments:
Post a Comment