How safe is our food supply, really?
In other words, what diseases are you more likely to get salmonella, bird flu, or mad cow disease? Here's the low-down on food-borne diseases from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis:
- First, what are your chances of getting sick from salmonella in raw eggs, chicken or drinking water? About 1 in half a million.
- How about Hepatitis A from an infected salad bar, or raw fruits and vegetables? You only have a 1 in 3 million chance of getting that.
- It's even harder to get E. coli that deadly disease from uncooked hamburger, contaminated sprouts, and unpasteurized milk or juice. That infects only 1 person in 5 million.
- And if you're worried about getting bird flu from chickens, turkey or other poultry, don't be. Only 2 people in the U.S. have been infected so far, and neither of them died.
- But shouldn't we be worried about Mad Cow disease? Well, you do the math. Only 1 infected cow has been found in the United States. And the 1 American woman who died of mad cow disease was infected when she lived in England.
