Are Food Safety Rules Helping to Ban the Germs?
April 5, 2001 (Washington) — Since the mid-1990s, the government has been trying to cut down on the number of cases of people getting sick from eating contaminated food. So the federal regulators have been phasing in new rules aimed at promoting good practices, increasing surveillance, and raising more attention to overall safety. But according to the CDC’s latest report, it is difficult to determine what effect, if any, these efforts have had at all. Investigators have estimated that food-borne illnesses affected about 76 million American each year. In these types of incidents, sufferers may not be affected at all or could show symptoms ranging from gastrointestinal problems to even death. Comparing 1996 to 2000, the CDC noted Thursday that while it appears that the overall incidence of food borne illness is now on the decline, regional variations and substantial year-to-year fluctuations have made it nearly impossible to identify a national trend. The CDC said that the incidence of
