CHAPEL HILL -- Whatever the issue these days, many Americans tend to get hysterical. The hullabaloo over the recent Salmonella enteritidis outbreak and the subsequent egg recall is a case in point.
To be sure, many types of salmonella infections, including Salmonella enteritidis infections, can be nasty and the symptoms and indications quite unpleasant. But given the nonstop coverage of this year's outbreak, the denunciations of our "lax" regulatory regime and over-the-top critiques mounted against industrial agriculture, one would have thought that we are experiencing not a modest flare-up of the disease but an epidemic with morbidity and mortality levels akin to those endured during the "cholera years" of the 19th century.
Perhaps some facts would have a bit of a calming effect. According to the Centers for Disease Control's most recent update, released on Sept. 20, the 2010 outbreak of salmonella began around May 1. As of Sept. 14, there were about 1,608 cases in multiple states likely to be associated with the outbreak.
How did the CDC derive this figure? The average number of documented cases of Salmonella enteritidis in the U.S. over similar May-September stretches over the previous five years was 1,144. A total of 2,752 illnesses were reported in 2010, and the CDC assumes that the overage of 1,608 compared to the five-year average likely can be attributed to the outbreak.
Over the course of the summer, epidemiologists and public-health officers from around the country were able, first, to identify tainted eggs as the likely source of the infections and, then, to trace the tainted eggs to a number of plants in Iowa operated by two large producers in that state, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms. As a result of government action and firm and industry cooperation, product recalls were ordered, and as of mid-September over 500 million eggs had been withdrawn from circulation.
As of mid-September, no one was yet known to have died from the "great" U.S. salmonella outbreak of the summer of 2010. In this respect at least, the outbreak differs from the experience at a recent Jewish wedding celebration in Bury, just outside of Manchester in the U.K. According to The Telegraph, an 82-year-old woman died, and nine other people fell ill after contracting salmonella following the wedding meal. "Fourteen guests," the paper reports, "are taking legal action against the kosher caterers who provided the food ..."
Nothing above should be construed as minimizing the problems that can be caused by salmonella outbreaks - even isolated outbreaks at wedding celebrations in Greater Manchester. I myself contracted a bad case in the isolated Rakhine State in western Myanmar in 2000, and, but for anti-diarrheals and Cipro (thoughtfully packed by my wife), would have been in (even) deep(er) do-do, as it were. And because of lags in reporting, some unfortunates regrettably may yet die from salmonella infections contracted this summer from tainted eggs.
This said, Americans need to keep in mind that there are over 308 million of us, and most of us eat at least three meals a day. That's about a billion "eating events" daily at which we are at risk to contract salmonella and other water/food-borne diseases.
We actually do contract mild cases of such diseases with considerable frequency - often without knowing it - but, on the whole, the modern American food system is generally pretty safe. Indeed, it seems to be getting safer. A recent report issued by the CDC reveals that the incidence of laboratory-confirmed cases of food-borne infections in 2009 was lower in six of seven leading categories compared to the 1996-1998 period - in the case of salmonella by 10 percent.
The overall safety record of our food system is more impressive still given the number of points in the production-to-ingestion sequence in which problems can occur. Such safety is due to many factors, including fairly effective regulatory protocols and practices and the efficiency and relative benignity of our modern food-supply chain. Anyone with even a modest sense of history realizes this.
While salmonella remains a major cause of death in many parts of the world, 30 people in the U.S. died of the disease in 2007, the most recent year for which we have complete statistics. Compare the 2010 tainted-egg salmonella outbreak with the normal situation in the American dairy industry a century ago.
According to economists Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode, two leading experts on the history of the industry, contaminated milk alone at that time "caused infections that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths per year in the United States.'' Perspective, anyone?
Peter A. Coclanis is Albert R. Newsome distinguished professor of history and director of the Global Research Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is past president of the Agricultural History Society.
