Congressional Digest

Excerpt

(Excerpted from Congressional Digest, April 2008)

Although the U.S. food supply is considered one of the safest in the world, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 76 million Americans get sick, more than 300,000 are hospitalized, and about 5,000 die each year because of something they ate. Recent food scares have involved such all-American staples as spinach, peanut butter, hamburger meat, and pet food.
A number of genetic, environmental, and behavioral factors contribute to the emergence of these outbreaks, along with centralized processing and broader distribution, which facilitate th…