Foodborne Disease in 2011 — The Rest of the Story

PERSPECTIVE

Foodborne Disease in 2011 — The Rest of the Story

NEJM | February 23, 2011 | Topics: Drugs, Devices, and the FDA, Public Health

Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Recent media headlines might have you believe that our food supply is substantially more safe than it was a decade ago and about to get even safer. First, on December 15, 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a long-awaited reanalysis of the burden of foodborne illness in the United States and reported a substantial decrease in the estimated incidence of foodborne disease between 1999 and 2011. Then, on January 4, 2011, President Barack Obama signed into law the Food Safety Modernization Act, the first major legislation related to the food-safety authority of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) since 1938. But as the late radio commentator Paul Harvey would say, “You know what the news is; in a minute, you’re going to hear . . . the rest of the story.”/.../