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US Food Safety Efforts Struggle Amid Death, Illness Mon Oct 7,10:47 AM ET By Carey Gillam KANSAS CITY (Reuters) - For Elsa Murano, a leader in the fight over US food safety, the news has not been good lately. With at least 20 deaths and 120 illnesses in eight Northeastern US states connected this week to food poisoning, and investigators probing a separate contamination problem that sickened dozens of people in the Midwest, the system the Murano is charged with strengthening appears very much broken. 'That is awful, absolutely terrible,' said Murano, under secretary for food safety for the US Department of Agriculture. 'I can't tell you how urgently I feel we need to do something about this.' Food safety is a significant problem in the US, with thousands of people made ill every year from what they eat. The severity of the sicknesses ranges from stomach cramps to death and often times the culprit is as innocuous as the lettuce leaves from a local salad bar or the medium-rare burger from a backyard barbecue. All told, an estimated 5,000 people die from food-borne illnesses each year and an estimated 76 million become ill in the United States. From 1990 to 2002, more than 90,300 different food-borne illnesses were reported, according to a report issued last month by the Center for the Science in the Public Interest. Salads, pizza and sandwiches were linked to 11,500 cases of food poisoning. Overall, the most common bearers of bad bacteria are produce, poultry, eggs, beef and seafood. 'Food safety problems are falling through the cracks,' said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of CSPI's food safety program and an active lobbyist on Capitol Hill. 'There is a huge amount of work to do.'
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