Inadequate oversight faulted for tainted foods

Chickens and turkeys contaminated with Campylobacter bacteria sicken 600,000 Americans every year because of inadequate oversight, says a new study that for the first time ranked the riskiest food contaminations.

The study, from the University of Florida's Emerging Pathogens Institute, ranked 10 pathogen-food combinations according to their public health impact. It found that the 10 combinations cost the economy $8 billion a year and 37,000 Quality-Adjusted Life Years, a measure of disease burden that factors in pain, suffering and a disease's impact on normal activities.

"The number of hazards and scale of the food system make for a critical challenge for consumers and government alike," lead author Michael Batz said in a statement. "Government agencies must work together to effectively target their efforts. If we don't identify which pairs of foods and microbes present the greatest burden, we'll waste time and resources and put even more people at risk."

The American Meat Institute quickly responded with a statement pointing out that the study's data linking pathogens to specific foods is lacking.

"The U.S. meat and poultry industry benefits when our products are as safe as we can make them, and that’s our goal every day that we produce our products," said AMI Executive Vice President James Hodges. "A report from the University of Florida is a novel new analysis of food safety, but highlights an area that should be strengthened: our lack of data that clearly identifies which foods cause foodborne illnesses."

The statement goes on to say that sampling data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) shows that "bacteria on many meat and poultry products have declined dramatically" in recent years.

After Campylobacter-infected poultry, the riskiest combinations according to the study are toxoplasma in pork, listeria in deli meats and salmonella in poultry.

More than 100,000 people are hospitalized and 3,000 die every year in the U.S. because of contaminated food. The study faults a fragmented oversight system and proposes specific remedies for different types of contaminations, including a recommendation that the Food and Drug Administration and the USDA coordinate efforts to track and tackle salmonella outbreaks.

"The lack of a unified strategy," says a summary of the study, "has impaired the government's ability to appreciably reduce Salmonella risks."

This post was updated at 2 p.m. with a statement from the American Meat Institute.