Foodborne illness causes a serious drain on human resources. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year approximately 1 in 6 Americans, or 48 million people, gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases.
Food Ingredients First has reported "Study Puts Cost of Foodborne Illness at Almost $78 Billion."
According to estimates by Dr. Robert Scharff of Ohio University the cost of foodborne illness to the US economy is $77.7 billion. This figure is roughly half his previous estimate of $152 billion. It is the position of Scharff that the new study will radically alter the way foodborne illness is compensated for by US companies. He has written “consequently, economic studies based on the previous estimates are now obsolete.”
This study has followed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recent revision of its estimates from 76 million to 48 million for the annual number of foodborne illnesses contracted domestically by Americans. The most common foodborne illnesses in the previous year were the norovirus, nontyphoidal-salmonella and clostridium perfringens according to the CDC study. It was estimated by the study that around 5.5 million Americans contracted the norovirus in the previous year which accounted for over half of all cases of foodborne illness.
The CDC study was used for Scharff’s study, but he replaced their productivity loss estimate with a pain, suffering, and functional disability measure that they claim more accurately reflects the true cost to food companies. The average cost per case of foodborne illness was put at $1,626 by Scharff. Ohio University has combined their model with the CDC figures in order to reach the figure of $77.7 billion. The University has acknowledged the limitations of the study and has stated that the true cost to the food industry is likely to be even higher as their model cannot ‘account for reduced consumer confidence, recall losses, or litigation’’
