Food-borne illnesses caused by fish, spices, produce and other edibles imported from other countries seems to be on the rise – but the countries of origin may be varied, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC defines a food borne disease outbreak as two or more similar illnesses resulting from the same type of food.
The report says that of the 39 outbreaks caused by foreign food (which caused 2,348 illnesses) from 2005 to 2010, 17 of them happened in 2009 and 2010, according to the report. Bad fish caused 17 outbreaks; spices were responsible for six. Nearly 45% of the cases came from food that had originated in Asia. The report found that nearly half of the outbreaks came from areas that hadn’t previously been associated with such diseases like Latin America that ranks number two.
The number of food poisoning outbreaks linked to imported food per year has more than doubled, to 6.5 in 2005-2010, up from 2.7 per year in 1998-2004, according to CDC data presented at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta, Georgia.
The true extent of the outbreaks is probably much more expansive than reported, according to the CDC. Food imports into the U.S. nearly doubled to $78 billion in 2007 from $41 billion in 1998, according to the Department of Agriculture. The study notes that 16 percent of the foods eaten in the United States are imported and as much as 85% of seafood consumed in the country comes from abroad. The nation's food imports are growing at a rate of 10 percent a year, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“As our food supply becomes more global, people are eating foods from all over the world, potentially exposing them to germs from all corners of the world, too,” said epidemiologist and lead author Hannah Gould in a statement. “We saw an increased number of outbreaks due to imported foods during recent years, and more types of foods from more countries causing outbreaks.”
The figures are not a big surprise to Erik Olson, director of food programs at the non-profit Pew Health Group. “The Food and Drug Administration is really only checking about 2 percent of the food that's imported into the U.S.,” Olson says, “so a lot can go unchecked and problems may not be found.”
Still, imports account for only a small fraction of all the foodborne disease outbreaks in the United States each year. “The CDC is talking about somewhere north of a dozen outbreaks, when there are maybe a thousand or 1200 outbreaks annually from all sources,” says Gavin Gibbons, spokesman for the National Fisheries Insititute, an industry trade group. “So, FDA appears to be doing a pretty good job.”
New legislation aims to increase inspections and improve safety at foreign food manufacturing facilities. New FDA rules to implement these changes are overdue, says Pew's Erik Olson, but he notes the agency may not get the funds it needs to follow through. “Our concern is that, with all the new requirements for imports and all the new protections that are envisioned, that unless FDA gets a bump-up in resources, it's going to be very hard - if not impossible - for the agency to do its job.”
FDA spokesman Doug Kares says the agency is working on a number of food safety rules and hopes to release them all as soon as possible.
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