What Are We Doing to Our Food?

How to Make Food Safer

IS EATING dangerous? Some statistics might lead you to conclude that is. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 130 million people in the (WHO) European Region are affected by food-borne disease each year. In the United Kingdom alone, over 100,000 cases of food poisoning-causing about 200 deaths-were reported  in 1998. It is estimated that in the United States, some 76 million illnesses result from food-borne disease each year and that of those cases, 325,000 involve hospitalization and 5,000 end in death. \

Globally, careful estimates are harder to come by. However, WHO reports that in 1998, approximately 2.2 million people died  from diarrheic diseases-1.8 million of them being children.  The report notes:  "A great proportion of these cases can be attributed to contamination of food and drinking water."

Those figures may sound staggering. But should statistics cause you to panic about the safety of your own food?  Probably not. Consider another example. In Australia, there are some 4.2 million cases of food-borne illnesses every year-or about 11,500 every day!  Now that may sound like a  lot.  But look at it from a different prospective. Australians eat about 20 billion meals a year, those meals less than one fiftieth of one percent lead to illness. In other words, the risk involved in each meal is really very small.

Nonetheless, the risk is real and sobering. What causes food to bring illnesses, and what can be done to reduce risk? 

Next time: What Are We Doing to Our Food? - Steps You Can Take 

From the AWAKE! magazine, 2001