U.S. Food Safety: Home-Grown Probl...(d imbalanced food-surveillance system th...),Health

And there's a lot to handle when it comes to food safety.

The number of outbreaks and cases of foodborne illness almost doubled in the United States between 1995 and 2000. In 1995, officials recorded 13,497 cases of food-related illness from 645 outbreaks; in 2000, there were 26,043 cases from 1,417 outbreaks. By 2005, however, the numbers had dipped a bit: There were 20,179 cases from 982 outbreaks.

But the types of outbreaks are now far more varied, due, in large part, to Americans' growing appetite for more raw fruits and vegetables, which can harbor dangerous bacteria.

Outbreaks of Listeria, a bacterium found in raw foods, have declined, while incidents of salmonella infection have stayed relatively flat. But infection with E. coli 0157:57, the dangerous bacteria that can show up in undercooked ground beef as well as dairy and vegetable products, which dropped dramatically in 2003 and 2004, is rising again -- and it's showing up in unexpected foods, such as spinach.

Fresh Produce Now the Focus

"One of the big issues of the day is fresh produce," said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, in Griffin. "Produce is where the action has been in the last few years, and there are a lot of reasons for it. One is a greater interest by consumers in eating fresh foods uncooked, and cooking serves a very important purpose of killing harmful bacteria."

"We've been consuming more produce, which is a good thing from a nutritional standpoint," he added. "But along with that, there have been issues with harmful microbes being present."

The cause of the E. coli outbreak in spinach that swept the nation in 2006 was never determined. However, the episode provided a glimpse into what can and does go wrong.

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