Foodborne Illness — An Old Problem with New Data

Ingestion of contaminated food has long been a cause of acute illness outbreaks. In recent years, many outbreaks have been attributed to the growth of agribusiness, entailing food distribution from a common source to many dispersed individuals.

In a study of data from the National Environmental Assessment Reporting System, researchers analyzed information from 2017–2019 (the last fully studied period) on 800 foodborne illness outbreaks reported by 25 state and local health systems throughout the U.S. The two most common organisms isolated were norovirus (47.0%) and Salmonella (18.6%). Unlike more-recent outbreaks, the vast majority of these were traced to 875 retail establishments, ultimately to a single ill food worker or to a restaurant th…