So if we wanted to reduce the danger of pathogens passing to people via food — not just drug-resistant bacteria, which are an increasingly significant problem, but all disease-causing ones — where to start?

Formulating a strategy is more difficult than it seems. In the US, policing food safety is divided among several federal agencies: the FDA, USDA and CDC. The FDA has responsibility for most of the food supply, including seafood, produce, processed food and fresh eggs. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) regulates fresh meat and poultry and egg products. The CDC surveys the illnesses that result from any of them, estimating most recently that one in six US residents, or about 48 million people, get sick each year, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die.

But most of those illnesses are never investigated, because a substantial portion of them occur individually or in small clusters, not in major outbreaks. Many of them have long-term consequences that are never recorded by any federal counting mechanism. And there’s currently no surveillance system that links pathogens and food — which means there’s no way to target which foods, or food-raising practices, pose the greatest risks.

The new food-safety bill, signed in January, addresses at least some of those barriers, by requiring a risk-based approach to foodborne illness — meaning, you look at what is causing the greatest problem, and aim your efforts and funding in that direction. But the bill — which certain Congressmen have threatened to starve of funding — covers primarily the FDA. And a new analysis suggests that’s not where the greatest problems lie. [Read more…]