Food Borne Illness

Revised CDC data indicate one in six Americans experiences food borne illnesses.
ABC World News (12/15, story 10, 0:20, Sawyer) reported that as the "sweeping food safety bill is stalled on Capitol Hill," newly-released data indicate "that one in six Americans get sick every year from food borne illnesses. Of those, 128,000 are hospitalized" and "3,000 die."
Although these numbers are considered "still too high" by Christopher Braden, "director of CDC's division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases," they are considerably lower than previous estimates, USA Today (12/16, Weise) points out. "Since 1999, the CDC has listed the number of cases of foodborne illnesses in the USA each year as 76 million, with 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths -- numbers the food industry had at times disputed. Now, after almost a decade of work, the CDC is releasing new estimates and they're 37% lower -- 47.8 million cases of foodborne illness" instead of the aforementioned 76 million.
Delving into specifics, the CNN (12/15, Falco) "The Chart" blog noted that the two CDC reports "estimate that 31 different bugs are to blame for about 9.4 million people getting sick from the food they eat." Norovirus, "which is often blamed for outbreaks on cruise ships and nursing homes for example, is said to cause about 60% of food poisoning related illnesses and salmonella is the leading cause of hospitalizations," while "Campylobacter, Listeria, E. coli 0157, the parasite that causes Toxoplasmosis, and Clostridium perfringen...also are listed as the most common cause of food poisonings." Still, approximately "38.4 million Americans get sick from still unknown pathogens according to this new data."