Co-author Tyler Williams, Director of Scientific Services, PathoSans — OPINION — Each of the authors of this article serves a specific role for our respective organizations. But we are united by a belief in the importance of food safety as a critical public and personal health issue that impacts everyone. It’s an issue that can, without warning, make otherwise healthy people sick or even die – some of them young children.
Yet, despite growing risks in the increasingly complex worldwide food industry, it’s an issue that is still too often rooted in a culture of ignorance and pass-the-buck thinking. Food safety is a major global health problem. In the U.
S. alone, we claim to have one of the safest food supplies in the world. Yet each year, according to the USDA , 48 million get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne illnesses.
One of the authors of this article personally experienced the death of a child from an E. coli outbreak. So, we know just how real the risk is.
We believe that It needs to be addressed by making it more than just “someone’s job;” it needs to be everyone’s mission . Education and public policy Often, when a serious food safety incident occurs, it’s publicized by local and national media, and sometimes it goes viral on social media. But frequently, people become ill in a way that doesn’t attract attention.
Sometimes, they aren’t even fully aware what made them ill; food-related illnesses can be mistaken as the f.
