The World Health Organization sets the number of people killed worldwide from food borne microbial diseases at 20 million a year, with animal products topping the list of causes. The WHO attributes the global rise in food borne illness not only to the "greater consumption of foods of animal origin, but the "methods of intensive production" required to supply such a demand." About half of all known foodborne pathogens have been discovered within just the past 25 years.
In industrialized countries, the incidence of reported infectious food- and waterborne illnesses has more than doubled since the 1970s. According to the best estimate of the CDC, an astonishing 76 million Americans come down with food borne illness annually. That's nearly one in four every single year. Remember that "24-hour flu" you or a family member may have had last year? There's no such thing as a 24-hour flu. It may very well have been food poisoning. In today's food safety lottery, each year Americans have approximately a 1 in 1,000 chance of being hospitalized, and about a 1 in 50,000 chance of dying, simply from eating.
It may be from E. coli O157:H7 in hamburgers, Salmonella in eggs, Listeria in hot dogs, "flesh-eating" bacteria in oysters. or Campylobacter in Thanksgiving turkeys. According to the executive editor of Meat Processing magazine, "Nearly every food consumers buy in supermarkets and order in restaurants can be eaten with certainty for its safety - except for meat and poultry products.
The latest comprehensive analysis of sources for food borne illness outbreaks found that chickens were the premiere cause overall. In fact, poultry and eggs caused more cases than red meat, seafood, and dairy products comblned. This British analysis showed that fruits and vegetables carried the lowest disease and hospitalization risk, whereas poultry carried the highest. The researchers conclude, "Reducing the impact of indigenous food borne disease is mainly dependent on controlling the contamination of chicken. Good luck. In the United States, the overwhelming majority of the 9 billion chickens raised each year are stocked in densities between 10 and 20 birds per square yard, unable even to stretch their wings. Under the avian carpet is a fecal carpet of filth most of the birds spend their lives upon.
Michael Greger "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching" (2006)
