Tuesday, June 02, 1998

Wisconsin Reporter Claims Food-borne Death Estimates Inflated

by Pamela Bowers

A journalist has blown the whistle on the widely quoted estimate that 9,000 people die from foodborne illness in the United States every year, reported the National Broiler Council in its Washington Report. The estimate is simply a "guess" that includes some highly questionable assumptions, according to Dan Wilson of the Appleton, Wis., Post-Crescent, writing in the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.

"The 9,000 figure includes 1,000 deaths per year from trichinosis -- a disease that has been virtually eradicated," Wilson wrote. "According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only one trichinosis death has been recorded in the past ten years."

Wilson also noted that the 9,000-death estimate, attributed to a physician named Dr. John Bennett, was published in a 1994 report by the Council on Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST), along with estimates prepared by Dr. Ewen Todd. "They produced wildly different numbers," Wilson wrote, with Todd estimating only 523 deaths per year from foodborne illnesses. Todd's fatality estimate was ignored in the press release announcing the CAST publication.

Wilson discussed the 9,000 estimate with Tanya Roberts, a member of the CAST task force and a researcher with USDA's Economic Research Service who has published papers on the costs of foodborne illness based on the Bennett estimates. Wilson wrote: "Roberts concedes that some of Bennett's numbers may be inflated," Wilson reported in his article. "Until we do a good analysis I would say we don't know for sure," Roberts told him. "I don't know where the truth lies," she told him, "and I don't think anyone else does. I don't thing Todd is accurate, and I don't think Bennett is accurate. The truth is somewhere in between."

"Nonetheless, numbers that were based on one researcher's best guess have achieved the status of unassailable truth simply by being run through several spin cycles until they were adopted without attribution by many reporters," Wilson wrote.

His article is available online at www.cjr.org/html/98-05-06-factoid.html

Overlooked by Wilson is the fact that Bennett and his colleagues -- Scott D. Holmberg, Martha F. Rogers and Steven L. Solomon -- were all researchers at the CDC when their paper was originally published in 1987. Their data were based on a presentation made at a conference in 1984, according to NBC. Thus, when CDC officials cite "the CAST estimates," they are actually citing estimates made by their own people approximately 15 years ago.

This article reprinted with permission from Meat Marketing and Technology Magazine.

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