Last month, federal officials lowered their estimates of how many Americans each year get sick from food. The new estimates are forty-eight million, or one in six people. One hundred twenty-eight thousand are hospitalized. And three thousand die.
The old estimates included seventy-six million illnesses and five thousand deaths. Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made their last estimates in nineteen ninety-nine. Officials say the difference is largely the result of improvements in data and research methods.
They say the two estimates cannot be compared to measure trends. Yet one thing has not changed.
About eighty percents of illnesses spread by food are still listed as having been caused by "unspecified agents." In other words, no one really knows which bacteria, viruses or other organisms were responsible.
But in cases with a known cause the experts say salmonella is responsible for more than one-third of hospitalizations. And it causes more than one-fourth of deaths.
The findings appear in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
And that’s the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson and Steve Baragona. I’m Jim Tedder.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25