Chicken Is the Number One Cause of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks. Here's How to Stay Safe
More than 100,000 people were sickened by food-related illness outbreaks between 2009 and 2015, according to a new analysis by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). And the food that made more people sick than any other? Chicken. It was confirmed as the cause of more than 3,000 (about 12%) of those cases.
Pork and seeded vegetables came in second and third for number of illnesses caused, both with more than 2,500 cases or about 10% each. Fish and dairy caused more individual outbreaks than any other food groups, according to the analysis, but those outbreaks were smaller and sickened fewer total people.
The report’s findings may not be surprising for anyone who’s ever taken a cooking class or cut into their chicken dinner to make sure it’s cooked all the way. Just last week, a court case made headlines after a healthy and fit mother of two died after eating uncooked chicken at a hotel in Greece. (A coroner said the woman likely contracted E. coli from the raw poultry.)
But the CDC says that its deep data dive, published in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, is important for the food-safety industry: Only a small percentage of the 9.4 million foodborne illnesses reported each year are associated with recognized outbreaks, the CDC said in its report—but studying those outbreaks can still provide valuable insight into how to keep consumers out of harm's way.
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