US Loses $152 Billion Each Year Due to Costs Associated With Food Poisoning
Apr 13, 2010 Food Poisoning
California personal injury lawyers know that every year millions of people become sickened by contaminated foods that lead to huge expenses like intensive care and hospital visits and other costs. Past estimates of these expenses were grossly understated at between $6.9 and $35 billion per year. New estimates, according to a report by the Produce Safety Project, indicate that every year the United States loses $152 billion due to costs associated with food borne illnesses.
Why the huge discrepancy between earlier reports and the new figures? It could be the fact that previous reports used conservative means to calculate the real costs of illnesses related to food poisoning every year.
Part of the vast difference in numbers is that many food poisoning illnesses go unreported. In fact, most of them do, and it has been shown that in the case of E. coli, 20 cases of food poisoning go unreported for each case that is reported.
Another factor in the discrepancy from past years to now is that federal food safety agencies such as the US Department of Agriculture and the FDA focus on common organisms that cause food poisoning such as salmonella and E. coli. There are numerous other organisms that can cause food borne illness, but these usually don’t make it into the media headlines. These instances are usually not documented or recorded, so they are not included in the estimates that are reported by the CDC or US Department of Agriculture.
The Produce Safety Project report took data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which indicated that in the US each year, there are over 76 million cases of illness related to contaminated foods. The researchers calculated the costs incurred due to each illness using this data. Instead of stopping at onetime costs such as a doctor visit, prescription, or hospital stay, the researchers went on to measure the loss of quality of life that food poisoning victims may have suffered.
In their research, it was determined that different states had various costs related to food borne illnesses. For example, Hawaii has a cost of $2,000 or more for a patient with a food borne illness, while other states had much lower costs. Florida, South Carolina, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey seemed to incur higher costs when it came to treating individuals with food borne illnesses when compared to other states.
Health advocates and food poisoning lawyers find these figures shocking, and realize that food safety is a major concern. These new figures should alarm lawmakers that swift action must be taken to increase food safety in this country.
Leave a Reply