According to the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as many as a quarter of Americans suffer a food-borne illness each year but only a few get linked to outbreaks like the recent peanut salmonella case.

There are more than 250 food related type of illness that scientists have counted which range from viruses to bacteria to parasites. The most common are the Norwalk-like viruses which affect cruise-ship passengers and account for about two-thirds of known food-poisoning cases, according to the CDC.

Campylobacter and salmonella, which are two types of bacteria, are the next most common with campylobacter said to constitute 14 % of food poisoning and salmonella
10 %.

A team of CDC scientists 10 years ago tried to collect figures on how many Americans get food poisoning every year and came up with 76 million illnesses, which resulted in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths.According to an Associated Press calculation that used the CDC formula and current population estimates the current figures are close to 87 million cases, 371,000 hospitalizations and 5,700 deaths.

There are more and more instances related to food poisoning cropping up every year with salmonella poisoning linked to hot peppers and tomatoes from Mexico that sickened more 1,400 last year; an E. coli outbreak from bagged spinach in 2006; and even deadly cases of hepatitis A from green onions in 2003.

The most recent outbreak being the one linked to peanut butter and peanut paste traced to plants operated by Peanut Corp. of America in Blakely, Ga., and Plainview, Texas, that has caused more than 640 confirmed illnesses in 44 states and been linked to nine deaths.

Health officials say that these numbers are lower than actual as for every salmonella case there are three dozen unreported cases, which would take the current peanut related outbreak to have sickened almost 20,000 people. Federal officials say the scare can continue for another two years.

Many experts believe that a solution out of this problem is to irradiate food with X rays to prevent food borne disease outbreaks. Food irradiation with gamma rays, a high-energy form of electromagnetic radiation is gaining increased interest as a way out.

Currently food that is approved for irradiation either by X rays or gamma rays are iceberg lettuce, spinach, nuts, meat, shell lobsters, crabs, guacamole, salsa and oysters. Ozone, a naturally occurring form of oxygen is approved by the FDA to sanitize leafy greens and meat as well as disinfecting municipal water. All the food that has been irradiated has to be labeled stating it.

"We think food irradiation in general is a tool that, like other treatments that reduce pathogens, has great potential for food safety," says Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases. "I think food would be safer if we made a lot more use of it."

Experts said despite sometimes dramatic problems in food production and inspections, the U. S. food supply is still considered one of the safest in the world. Tauxe, when asked about the U. S. food supply said, "I usually say it is one of the safest in the world. But increasingly, our food supply is the world."