Experts say US food supply safe despite outbreak, food recalls

From Boar’s Heard sausages and waffles to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder burgers, this year’s disease outbreaks – some of them fatal – and food recalls may have Americans wondering if there are new threats to the American diet.

But some experts noted that it is business as usual when it comes to the complex task of keeping food safe.

The United States is among the top 113 countries included in the Global Food Safety Index, which measures aspects of food access and quality, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“The US food supply remains one of the safest in the world,” FDA officials said in a statement.

People may be scared off by the “number of high-profile recalls that affect a lot of people,” said Teresa Murray, who heads the consumer watchdog office of the consumer advocacy group PIRG.

“These are products that people eat regularly,” he said.

On average, the two federal agencies that oversee the US food supply—the FDA and the Department of Agriculture—announce more than 300 food recalls and warnings each year. The FDA regulates about 80% of foods, including dairy products, fruits and vegetables, and the Department of Agriculture regulates meat and poultry products, among others.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records approximately 800 outbreaks of foodborne illness each year, in which two or more people become ill from the same food or drink. Most of the nearly 48 million cases of food poisoning reported each year are not related to confirmed outbreaks, the agency explained.

The pace of food recalls and warnings seems to be increasing this year; 300 cases were registered till mid-October. But recalls are different from disease outbreaks, which are increasingly being detected thanks to sophisticated genetic sequencing techniques, explained Donald Schaffner, a food science expert at Rutgers University.

“I don’t think the food supply is getting any more secure,” Schaffner said. “I think we’re stuck. “We’re not getting better. “

Federal data shows that the United States has not made much progress in reducing rates of foodborne illness, as called for in Healthy People 2030, an initiative to promote population health and well-being.

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