If you think there seems to be more recalls, you’re right! There were 214 food recalls in 2006, 247 in 2007 and 310 in 2008 according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Surprisingly, food manufacturers say this is not bad, it’s actually a good thing. Dr. Robert Brackett, chief science and regulatory-affairs officer for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, says “It may look like the food supply is getting less safe, but it actually means that we’re getting better at detecting the outbreaks.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has figures that appear to uphold Brackett’s findings, which reveal the decrease of food-borne illnesses as the food recalls have increased in the past few years.

The FDA’s associate commissioner for food safety, Dr. David Acheson, reports that the agency is getting more diligent when it comes to finding health dangers before any illness is reported. Acheson gave an example of this by mentioning the pistachio recall, explaining that the nuts were taken off the shelves before anyone got ill.

Having said all this, there are some lawmakers that are still concerned that the FDA isn’t doing all they can, so they are working on a new bill that will tighten regulations. This legislation would force food manufacturers to closely follow the distribution of their products, as the FDA would make more numerous visits to food manufacturing plants.

There are now more challenges than in the past because of the worldwide distribution of the food supply. There are more chances for contamination because of more stops from the farm to the home. 

Recently, the FDA has opened offices in China and India to keep in closer contact with food producers there. Fortunately new advances in surveillance technology has allowed the CDC to be able to track the genetic fingerprint of food-borne illnesses all over the nation, which lets the FDA caution Americans more quickly when it comes to possible health risks.

This said, even though there is increased oversight, the FDA advises that there will still be some recalls. Acheson says that “It’s not possible to be inspecting and testing every food item; you simply cannot do it.”

Robert Tauxe, the deputy director of the CDC’s Division of Food-borne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases, says that there should be more done at all the levels of the movement of food in the food chain in order to stop bacterial contamination.

Beginning in 1996, the agency has been keeping track of the number of people diagnosed with infections that were caused by eight bacteria and three parasites found in food. Several of the illnesses had decreased in numbers until 2004, when they started going up and have remained steady. These include illnesses caused by salmonella, vibrio, E coli 0157 and cambylobacter.

The first data of 2008 showed that the infection rates for five food-borne illnesses had surpassed national goals that were set by the CDC. For example, in 2008, the goal for salmonella cases was 7 illnesses for every 100,00 people, but the number was an astounding 16. This data did not include the outbreak of the salmonella illness that was due to the tainted peanut products which started at the end of last year and climaxed in the beginning months of this year. Almost 700 people became sick and 9 were killed.

Tauxe claimed that there are several elements behind this upswing, three being the complexity of the U.S. food chain, the ever changing character of bacteria and the increase of imports. The intricacy of the problem is causing many varieties of food to become contaminated, which includes more produce and some new foods that have not been affected in the past.

The study found that children under 4 are especially vulnerable to food-borne pathogens. Also, adults over 50 are more likely to be hospitalized and die from similar illnesses. According to Tauxe, some of the ways children can become infected is by living with pet turtles or reptiles, riding in shopping carts that have raw poultry and meats, or from day care centers, where other children or day care employees are not washing their hands properly.

Salmonella still remains the most common culprit of food poisoning. There was more than 7,400 lab-confirmed illnesses in the states that were tracking the illnesses. CDC officials said that there hasn’t been a substantial change in the rate of salmonella cases in recent years.

The two kinds of bacterial infections that were the second and third most common food-borne illnesses are campylobacter and shigella. These happen at rates of around 13 and 7 per 100,000.