Take a Bite Out of Food-Borne Illnesses This Summer

Summertime is prime time for food-borne illness. Each year, some 76 million Americans get sick because of something they ate, and experts say cases peak during warm months. Education is one of the best ways to fight back against the bugs; this year, arm yourself with some high-caliber facts.

One of the most common illnesses isn't a household name

Watch out salmonella, Campylobacter is working the room.

"Campy" is the leading cause of bacteria-related diarrhea in the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration. In fact, experts say it's likely you've had a run-in with Campy before, and just not realized it. So why the low profile?

There are a couple of reasons. First off, campy's just not that mean of a bug. Catch it and you can expect a week of flu-like symptoms, plus diarrhea. "I'm not volunteering to get it, but at the same time it generally doesn't result in hospitalization or death," says Jim Dickson, a professor of animal science at Iowa State University and head of the multi-university Food Safety Consortium.

Campy's pattern of infection is also a factor. The big-name food sickness outbreaks tend to be multi-state affairs, involving hundreds of people. Campy, in contrast, is more sporadic. An "outbreak" often means a bad week for one family. That's because this bug is a delicate creature. Heat it up, dry it out, deprive it of oxygen—lots of things will kill it quickly.

For instance, campy naturally lives in healthy birds, so it's no surprise that a 2005 FDA testing program found it on 47 percent of store-bought raw chicken breasts. But cook that chicken to an internal temperature of 165°F and you should have nothing to worry about. In fact, campy is one of the easiest food-borne illnesses to control at home. The CDC reports that most cases can be prevented by properly cooking and handling raw meat, steering clear of "raw" or unpasteurized milk products, and not drinking untreated water from lakes or streams.

Prevention doesn't begin and end in your kitchen

As the writer of the Barf Blog, Douglas Powell is used to shooting from the hip. But some topics make Powell, associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University, more trigger-happy than others. Powell is known for taking a stand against familiar food safety rhetoric, which he says focuses too much on the failures of consumers, and not enough on food companies or the government. "Summer is really our annual 'Blame the Consumer Fest,'" he says. "But the outbreaks that are happening are, more than ever, out of consumer control."

Powell and other experts say that bacteria like E. coli and salmonella often come into contact with fresh produce as it's growing because of mistakes that happen during farming, such as watering using tainted sources. In that case, the bacteria works its way into the plants and can't be simply washed off.

Outbreaks linked to factories turning out tainted ready-to-eat processed foods, such as cold cuts or peanut butter, also can't be prevented at home. "The the analogy is like driving a car," says Jim Dickson. "You can do some things to make yourself safer, but you're not free from the risk of a drunk driver coming down the wrong side of interstate."

Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, says concerns like these are a big part of why Washington is currently debating new food safety regulations. There are several different bills floating around Congress, and nobody knows exactly what form the final legislation will take. But the focus will most definitely be on holding food industry professionals responsible for the products they sell.

That bit has to be clarified, Lovera says, because of blog posts and chain e-mails that circulated this spring during the outbreak of salmonella from peanuts. The Internet rumors claimed one bill, The Food Safety Modernization Act (H.R. 875), sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, (D-Conn.), would outlaw organic farming and seed banks, and put personal backyard gardens under federal regulation. Some versions of the story went so far as to paint Rep. DeLauro's husband, Stanley Greenberg, as a lobbyist for industrial agriculture corporations like Monsanto. But food-safety experts, sustainable farming advocates like Lovera, and independent research organizations like FactCheck.org all say those tall tales just aren't true.