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Foodborne Illness In California

Between 1998 and 2014, California had to deal with 2,305 foodborne illness outbreaks. These resulted in a total of 52,440 illnesses, 3,215 hospitalizations and 108 deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 48 million Americans — about 1 in 6 — are sickened by foodborne pathogens each year, but most illnesses are never reported. CDC estimates that for every salmonella case reported, another 29 go unreported. For every report of E. coli O157-H7 (the most common strain of dangerous E. coli), 29 are unreported.

Norovirus, salmonella, campylobacter, E. coli, listeria and hepatitis A were some of the pathogens responsible for foodborne illnesses in California.

The state’s spike in hospitalizations represented by the graph above was due, in part, to an outbreak of salmonella linked to peanut butter. The listeria outbreak from cantaloupe was responsible for the spike in deaths in 2011.

Get this data and more through CDC’s Foodborne Outbreak Online Database.