The economic costs of foodborne illness

A new report by Professor Robert Scharff of Ohio State University finds that the costs of foodborne illnesses in the US, including healthcare costs, lost productivity, pain and suffering on the part of victims, and other costs exceed $152 billion per year. This report provides a more complete documentation of the costs of foodborne illnesses than any previous research. It aggregates medical costs, including hospital, physician and drug charges, and quality of life issues, including loss of function, pain and suffering, and death, and breaks them out by pathogen. The reprot lists costs by pathogen and the costs state by state in the complete report.

About $39 billion of health-related losses can be traced to food poisoning caused by fresh, processed and canned produce. Tainted produce of all kinds is responsible nearly 20 million reported episodes of foodborne illness every year. The six states most seriously affected by produce-related illnesses are:

• California
• Florida
• Illinois
• New York
• Pennsylvania
• Texas

California alone has more than 2,300,000 episodes of produce-related food poisoning per year, at cost to the state’s economy of $4.67 billion per year.

This averages to a cost per case of $1,972. The report was commissioned by the Produce Safety Project, based at Georgetown University. The Project advocates for the FDA to establish mandatory safety standards for all produce, both domestically grown and imported.

At this time the US has no enforceable national agricultural standards for safe cultivation and handling of fruits and vegetables. Instead the agency has preferred to send recommendations and letters of guidance to growers and processors. The 700-plus incidents of large-scale food contamination in the last five years, and the 5000 deaths annually from food poisoning are evidence that this approach is not working. Now the FDA has announced that by the end of 2010 it will proposed a set of safety standards for the raising, harvesting and packing of fresh produce.