Buy local (and I mean local, directly from the farmer if possible) or, grow your own!!!!

I glad you brought up the issue of contamination at home, because all to often people cross-contaminate or improperly prepare foods. Eating safe foods requires self-education and individual responsibility. That said, both the FDA and USDA need some major overhaul in food regulation!

This was mentioned on consumerist too, and its important to note the omission of meats since they are not regulated by the FDA.

Regardless of the stats, this is going to (sadly) make more Americans turn to processed junk.

Funny--except for the seafood, all the other stuff can be grown or made at home without too much trouble or as LauraEvrard mentioned, bought from your local farmer.

Ironically or coincidentally or tragically or whatever you want to call it, the FDA, USDA or whoever is responsible, wants to put a stamp on all leafy greens to certify them as safe which sucks for those local farmers that also sell (most likely) safe greens to begin with.

And ground beef--that will probably just end up getting irradiated which will reduce the risk of ecoli dramatically.

Hopefully, all of this tragedy surrounding tainted food will cause people to do a little bit of research about their food supply so they can make educated decisions.

I've had food poisoning 3 times in the past 5 years. It's no picnic. But I'm a little confused, are these foods more contaminated than they were in the past (prior to 1990-2006)?

The potato one cracks me up because it isn't necessarily contamination from the potatoes because of cross contamination with other foods put into potato salads or cross contamination from surfaces raw meat was on first. I would be pissed at this list if I were in the potato industry.

The one that freaked me out the most was eggs possibly being contaminated from the hens reproductive physiology and not always from a dirty shell. It makes me shudder to think what happens to hen in egg factories.

The study I would like to see is how these overall stats compared to local kind farm and CSA products vs. conventional products.

This is such a bogus list. The fact that this'll cross more readers's computer screens than the NYT article about the woman whose life was ruined by Ecoli (from over-processed, contaminated hamburger) is terrible and sad.

I am pesca-, and my husband is mostly pesca-, and we eat greens and eggs nearly every day. Oysters are my favorite (couple times yearly) treat. Bring the danger. I'm way less scared of spinach than of frozen pre-prepared hamburger patties.

No food is safe. Growing your own is no protection either - can easily be contaminated by run-off, animals, etc.

All food can kill you, but not eating will kill you faster. Just as you can be killed by what you breathe or drink (flu, breakdowns in purification, old pipes...) but asphyxiation or thirst is worse.

Hmm a segment about what's necessary to be safe in the kitchen would be appreciated by me. Is there something in the archives?

No, I'm not concerned (you asked).

If people are concerned they should wash their hands, wash their food and cook it thoroughly before eating. There is potential for contamination in all foods. Some eaters draw the short straw, but how many gazillion tomatoes or heads of lettuce were eaten in the 16 years of these stats? I've got better things to worry about.

I'm not concerned. When I prepare food at home I'm very careful about cross-contamination and cleaning (which is probably why my hands are always dry and raw from overwashing), and I'm pretty picky about which restaurants I'll eat at. The last time I let myself be talked into eating at a big chain restaurant that I didn't trust, I ended up with horrific food poisoning that lasted for five days. But these things happen, and you learn from them.

I refuse to buy ground meat. Who knows how many cows were comingled to get the grind,where the meat came from or how sanitary the processing was. I always grind my own meat from good cuts of meat with meticulous attention to sanitation. All fruits and veggies get a good scrubbing, especially the melons and tomatoes. Why are potatoes on the list?

I always say that it's fruitless to worry about what you cannot control.

While there are technically things I can do to work around this problem -- as others have pointed out: buying local, growing your own, pushing for FDA reform -- these things don't fit well into my schedule, climate, and yardless/balconyless apartment. I'd love to get involved with regulation reform, but realistically it's a drop in the bucket of things I don't have time for, and is not high on that list of priorities. My attitude is not negative, merely pragmatic.

Fixating on foodbourne illnesses you may contract isn't just paranoia, it's hypochondriasis.

Also, no one can convince me to give up my cheese :)

i'm not at all concerned about getting food poisoning in things i prepare. i know how to handle my food and my prep.

i think that more cases come from poor prep than from the farms.

the only time i've ever had food poisoning was almost ten years ago when my brother put a final brush of the marinade on the grilled chicken after it came off the grill. the same marinade that the raw chicken had been sitting in all day and night.

happens :) i had a mild case so i can't complain. i've learned of some bad cases.

Isn't this list very strongly skewed by the amount of each individual food we eat?

If people eat 50 times more potatoes than oysters, How does this make oysters riskier?

This list needs to be normalized by the rate of consumption. I want to know (outbreaks)/(million units of food eaten)

I've read that this list is actually quite flawed--as kmarie points out, there isn't anything that tells you if it was the potatoes themselves or cross-contamination from other ingredients in dishes. Furthermore, ice cream is on there because of one study in something like 1995.

I don't think ice cream is necessarily "dangerous" today as a result of an issue nearly 15 years ago.

And, frankly, the same goes for many of these foods. For most of them, the issue is hygiene during preparation. Wash tools and surfaces, your hands, and the food itself, and you'll probably be just fine with any of these.

As a long time vegan, I survived a near fatal e. coli infection 7.5 years ago. The culprit was likely an organic mango.

I agree with the idea that origination and preparation are much, much more important in the grand scheme of things.

Luckily, here in Europe (especially in Switzerland) we have high quality food and very few outbreaks of any kind. Food isn't played with too much (i.e. your salad is likely to have grown in a field and not to contain any chemicals, and your cow might even have lived outside eating real grass in the mountains).

As far as food safety goes, I am careful about washing my vegetables well and especially careful with handling raw eggs and poultry, otherwise I am not really worried.

I would however be a bit more scared if I was eating processed meat (especially in the US) since I read the NY Times article mentioned in some of the comments above.

BTW, like juice says, it would be interesting to have an article reminding us of all the safe practices to apply in the kitchen!

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I eat cheese made with raw milk (*gasp* ) weekly and since my most tender youth, and I have yet to experience any instance of food poisoning (if you rule out the time I got tourista from eating tapas in Spain)

Im curious to know if washing the vegetables in question with a soapy vegetable wash does anything to reduce the risk? Are these people getting sick because of something ON the food or IN the food?

The short answer? Both. Washing certainly won't hurt, but for produce like leafy greens, the bugs can easily get inside when the leaves are damaged, either during harvest or during transport. If the water used to irrigate the field is contaminated with something like e. coli, it can even get into the plant itself.

Of course, the e. coli doesn't come from plants. It typically comes from livestock. One more reason to cut down on or eliminate eating meat.