These new estimates provide a snapshot of the problem and do not measure trends and do not indicate that the problem is getting better or worse. We're extremely pleased to have a new baseline to measure our future efforts to improve food safety. Updated estimates of food-borne illness are needed to guide new prevention efforts and assess the effectiveness of food safety measures. Although the U.S. food supply is among the safest in the world, the nation increasingly faces new food safety challenges. Novel pathogens are emerging, and familiar ones are growing resistant to treatment.
American consumers eat out more and cook for themselves less.
Since 1993, the Clinton Administration significantly has expanded food safety programs, increasing consumer protections to ensure that the U.S. food supply remains one of the safest in the world. In 1998, CDC launched a collaborative interagency initiative called PulseNet that uses DNA fingerprinting to better detect food-borne illness. Today, any one of the more than 35 laboratories in CDC's PulseNet network can fingerprint E. coli in less than 24 hours whereas the process used to take days or weeks.