Are Food Safety Trends Really Getting Worse?

Chipotle can’t seem to keep out of the news these days. Once again the chain closed one of its stores in Columbus, Ohio after the Delaware County health department received hundreds of calls reporting food poisoning attributed to meals purchased at the location. This incident occurred despite the new CEO who promised greater food safety surveillance to end the spate of outbreaks Chipotle has suffered over the last couple of years.

After inspecting the location, the health department gave it the greenlight to reopen. Whatever the cause of the outbreak, it was not an obvious health code violation and requires further investigation. Nevertheless, the damage has been done. The public has heard about this incident, assumes the worst, and continues to wonder if food safety measures are failing.

Lately consumers (including journalists) have come to suspect that foodborne illness is on the rise, and that the problem may be getting worse. Is this perception accurate?

What Does the CDC Have to Say?

In 2017, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new data on foodborne illness in a FoodNet report documenting trends in foodborne illness outbreaks. The good news: concerted strategies by regulators and the industry at large have significantly reduced the number of illnesses associated specifically with E. coli O157:H7.

The not so good news: the number of diagnosed Campylobacter, Listeria, Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia infections diagnosed increased 96% in 2017 compared with the 2014 – 2016 average. And reports of overall foodborne disease outbreaks linked to restaurants increased 60% in 1998 – 2015. That doesn’t sound promising.

If we look more closely at these statistics, we find that they don’t necessarily point to an increase in foodborne illness in absolute terms. Rather, they indicate increases in both diagnosis and reporting capabilities. And that might actually be encouraging.

Is Food Safety Really Getting Worse?

It’s a complicated question – one that a CNN report tried to answer this past July. The story pointed out, among other insights, that even if outbreaks have increased, each outbreak may be contained faster, resulting in fewer cases per incident than was typical in the past. Furthermore, our current food system and consumer culture have undergone considerable changes over the last 50 years, many of them presenting unprecedented risks for foodborne illness. Thus, comparing statistics from, say, 1978 to those of 2018, may very well be a the classic “apples to oranges” comparison predicament. CNN makes a case for the following developments as potential new sources of risk that food service professionals must now take into account.

An Aging American Population

Not only has the overall U.S. population increased, creating a larger pool of potential victims, but perhaps more significantly, the proportion of Americans at greater risk of falling ill from food poisoning is rising dramatically. Baby boomers are not only aging, but they are also living longer. This means less functional immune systems to combat pathogens in food. In fact, in a recent Listeria outbreak involving cantaloupe, the average age of those who developed an illness was 84.

The Rise of Dining Out

The proportion of the American food dollars spent outside the home has finally crossed the 50% mark, which means both a larger pool of consumers and more intensive food processing and distribution requirements to meet this growing need. The increase in outbreaks can be partially explained through the increase in the number of restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores, gas stations, kiosks, and vending machines that serve food 24/7. In addition, the rise in popularity of delivery options has contributed to spoiled food in transit, leading to an increase in outbreaks.

A Changing American Diet

After decades of lecturing from nutritionists, Americans are finally choosing fresh foods over canned and processed foods – especially produce. That’s great for overall health. However, because many popular produce items (such as bagged lettuce and pre-cut fruit) are prepared and sold without any “kill steps” such as heating or freezing, illness-causing germs are more likely to survive from farm to table.

The Global Food System

Talking about the “American food system” is as much a misnomer as “American cars.” Now that we are into the third decade of the 21st century, we can safely say that all commercial enterprises are on a global scale. How else is it possible to buy “fresh” strawberries in February? Food is imported and exported all over the world, covering vast distances along the supply chain, much of it necessarily cold to preserve perishable foods – again, increasing risk potential if foods fall out of safe temperature ranges.

The increasing volume of imported food into the U.S. contributes to the risk of outbreaks because the FDA is too understaffed and underfunded to oversee all inspections. Statistically, only 1% of imported food is inspected by the FDA, while 95% of seafood, 50% of fresh fruit, and 25% of fresh vegetables consumed by Americans comes from overseas. If exporting countries lack food safety standards, their goods are more likely to bypass our regulatory system.

Improved and Increased Reporting

Perhaps the most significant reason for the apparent increase in the number of foodborne illness outbreaks is, quite simply, that they are now diagnosed and reported more often than in the past. Better tools for detecting, investigating, and reporting contamination, along with state-of-the-art labs and CDC databases, are likely to diagnose foodborne illness more quickly and accurately. Confirmed cases of food poisoning of today may have been misdiagnosed as stomach flu, or in other cases, overlooked to begin with in years past.

Perhaps the question of whether or not food safety is getting better or worse is misdirected. Clearly, the food industry is always in a state of continuous evolution. Maybe it’s time to recognize that food safety is never a “done deal,” but a continuous effort to keep the public safe.

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