According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention new statistics have shown that the same five infectious pathogens including salmonella and E. coli are the reason for food borne illnesses in 2008 as they were in 2004. At a news conference Robert Tauxe, MD, MPH, deputy director of the CDC's Division of Foodborne, Bacterial, and Mycotic Diseases said there had been "no change" in reports of lab-confirmed food-borne illnesses since 2005 and "little significant change since 2004. He added that progress at curbing these illnesses has "plateaued."

According to the CDC estimates the nationwide estimates have remained steady at 87 million cases of food-related illnesses, 371,000 hospitalizations and 5,700 deaths. A decline was seen between 1996 and 2004 due to an improvement in meat and poultry safety as a result of aggressive efforts by the U. S. Department of Agriculture but tainted produce tilted the numbers back. The recent outbreaks have been caused by tainted spinach, lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, peppers and peanuts. "We recognize that we have reached a plateau in the prevention of food-borne disease," Tauxe, said during a briefing Thursday. He said the leading infectious culprits in the food supply were campylobacter, cryptosporidium, listeria, shiga toxin-producing E. coli O157: H7, salmonella, shigella, vibrio, and yersinia.

Tauxe said new farm-to-fork efforts were required to evaluate food safety as well as improved methods to quickly trace the source of contaminated produce. The CDC had set a goal of seven illnesses per 100,000 people for salmonella-related sickenings, but the ratio last year was more than double at 16 illnesses per 100,000. This was excluding figures from the tainted-peanuts outbreak, which sickened nearly 700 people in 46 states and is said to have caused nine deaths. Although the incidence of several food-borne illnesses like yersinia, shigella, listeria, sampylobacter, and shiga toxin-producing E. coli 0157 have become less common since 1996-1998, still the rate of reported food-borne illness hasn't budged much since 2004, Tauxe notes.

"Perhaps we should be grateful that it hasn't really increased," Tauxe said. He added that there is "no question that our food supply is much safer now than 50 or 100 years ago," thanks to pasteurization, cleaner water, and better control of many animal diseases.

The figures were based on a study in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Food-borne illnesses in 10 states which served as statistical barometers of food-related illnesses nationwide were analyzed. The data was collected by the researchers from FoodNet, a collaborative database of the CDC, the USDA, and the Food and Drug Administration.

The 10 states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Tennessee. A total of 18,499 laboratory-confirmed cases of nine food-borne illnesses in 2008 were recorded from these states. Food borne illnesses however accounted only for 7% of the salmonella cases reported to the CDC in 2008. The break up is as follows: Salmonella: 7,444 cases, Campylobacter, 5,825 cases, Shigella: 3,029 cases, Cryptosporidium: 1,036 cases, E. coli 0157: 718 cases, Yersinia: 164 cases, Listeria: 135 cases, Vibrio: 131 cases, and Cyclospora: 17 cases. Reports of food-borne illnesses were seen in children younger than 4 in a greater proportion than other age groups. Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, Suffolk County's health commissioner said, "Complacency . . . by food vendors and restaurants, weekend barbecue enthusiasts or regulatory bodies can easily reverse gains and lead to devastating consequences."