Food-borne diseases take heavy toll on public health

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Posted on Tue, Dec. 30, 2003Food-borne diseases take heavy toll on public health

By Alison Young

Knight Ridder Newspapers

 

 

 

WASHINGTON - In the week since mad cow disease was discovered in the United

States, more than a million Americans were sickened by food they ate.

 

About 6,000 became so ill they were hospitalized and nearly 100 died, according

to federal health estimates. But mad cow disease wasn't the culprit. Indeed, not

a single American is known to have contracted the human form of the disease from

eating food in this country.

 

Instead, salmonella, E. coli, listeria and other dangerous bacteria routinely

take a huge toll on public health, yet get little of the attention that's now

focused on the beef from one Washington state Holstein found infected with mad

cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

 

" There is not enough attention to general food-borne diseases, " said Dr.

Christopher Braden, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's chief of

outbreak response and surveillance in the food-borne disease branch.

 

" While bovine spongiform encephalopathy is of concern, it's not the greatest

public health concern we face in food-borne disease. " The toll from food-borne

disease is staggering: 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000

deaths in the United States each year, according to CDC estimates.

 

Salmonella, for instance, caused 32,000 confirmed illnesses last year - and many

times that number probably were sickened by the bacteria but never had tests to

confirm it. " Certainly if this were a disease hitting the radar screen and it

was the first time it had ever been discovered and there were 30,000 cases

reported, it would be an uproar, " Braden said Tuesday. Organisms that consumers

may never have heard of cause many illnesses. Campylobacter, a bacteria

associated with raw or undercooked poultry, causes about 2 million cases of

diarrhea, nausea and vomiting each year, and sometimes causes life-threatening

infections or triggers rare immune-system responses. Listeria monocytogenes, a

cold-loving bacteria found in ready-to-eat lunchmeats and hot dogs, causes about

2,500 illnesses a year, and most of those people are so ill they are

hospitalized. About 500 will die, the CDC estimates.

 

Brad Matthews of Raleigh, N.C., no longer takes for granted that the food he

eats is safe.

 

At age 27, he's been unable to work since July 2001, when he was hospitalized

during a bout of food-borne illness caused by campylobacter. He recovered from

the nausea and vomiting, but then developed Reiter's syndrome, a painful

inflammation of the joints believed to be triggered by the bacteria.

 

" I was an administrative assistant just right out of college, " Matthews said

Tuesday. " My future looked bright, and it just happened out of the blue. " The

pain in his joints has made it impossible to live normally, he said. He can't

drive, walk his dog or even play the guitar. The public needs to pay more

attention, Matthews said. " I don't think people really care. I knew about these

food-borne diseases, but I thought to myself it wouldn't happen to me, " he said.

 

Food safety advocates hope that the furor over mad cow disease and calls for

reform will help focus the attention of policy makers and the public on broader

issues in farming and food manufacturing that could help reduce the number of

Americans sickened by what they eat.

 

" I don't think mad cow is a public health crisis, " said Carol Tucker Foreman,

who was an assistant secretary of agriculture in charge of food safety during

the Carter administration. " I do think we have a serious public-health problem

with regard to food-borne illness. And it's not just meat and poultry, but fresh

fruit and vegetables, eggs and fish. "

 

Tucker Foreman, who heads the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation

of America, said the mad cow situation _ and efforts by regulators to find the

Holstein's birth herd _ had demonstrated the need for a system that allowed

cattle to be traced.

 

" We've urged the USDA to establish an animal trace-back system for 20 years, "

she said. " Not only do you need to trace back an animal that has signs of mad

cow disease, but you also could trace back an animal that has a gut full of E.

coli 0157:H7. "

 

On Tuesday, the USDA said it would establish such a tracking system. Advocates

also have urged for years that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food

and Drug Administration be given the authority to order companies to recall

tainted products. The current system allows only for voluntary company recalls,

Tucker Foreman said.

 

While USDA officials have said they didn't lose any time negotiating with the

plant over launching the recall of 10,400 pounds of meat from the infected

Holstein and 19 others slaughtered with her, Tucker Foreman said it sometimes

could take days to get companies to agree on how much food they're willing to

pull off the market.

 

From 1998 through 2000, nearly 109 million pounds of meat and meat products were

recalled in the United States for problems ranging from contamination with

dangerous bacteria to undercooking of ready-to-eat foods. But just 24 percent of

that meat - 26 million pounds - was recovered, according to a Knight Ridder

analysis of the most recent recall data available on the USDA' s Web site. In

2000, the data show, only 17 percent of recalled meat was recovered. With its

announcement this week, the USDA banned sick or injured cattle from the meat

supply. But Tucker Foreman and Braden said there should be more and better

microbiological testing of all kinds, and greater attention to good agricultural

and manufacturing practices. The CDC also supports greater use of irradiation of

meats and pasteurization of eggs as a way of reducing bacteria in those

products, Braden said.

 

As the population of the United States grows older, the risk from common

food-borne illnesses will increase. The people most at risk are those with

compromised immune systems, including people with AIDS, lupus and transplanted

organs. Also at higher risk are elderly people, young children and pregnant

women, who may suffer miscarriages if they eat foods contaminated with listeria

monocytogenes.

 

Food industry officials said consumers needed to do their part to make sure the

food they ate was safe.

 

" Salmonella, listeria, E. coli, they can all be easily controlled with simple

procedures at home, " said Stephanie Childs, a spokeswoman for the Grocery

Manufacturers of America, the leading trade group for brand-name foods. Cooking

foods thoroughly, not allowing raw meats to contaminate other foods and washing

hands will go a long way to keeping people healthy, she said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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