Indiana State Health Improvement Plan (I-SHIP) - State of Indiana

Assure Food Safety
In the United States, about 48 million people (1 in 6 Americans) get sick,
128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die each year from foodborne diseases,
according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. This is a significant public health burden that is largely
preventable.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Safety
Modernization Act (FSMA), signed into law by President Obama on
January 4, 2011, enables FDA to better protect public health by
strengthening the food safety system. It enables FDA to focus more on
preventing food safety problems rather than relying primarily on reacting to
problems after they occur. The law also provides FDA with new
enforcement authorities designed to achieve higher rates of compliance with
prevention- and risk-based food safety standards and to better respond to
and contain problems when they do occur. The law also gives FDA
important new tools to hold imported foods to the same standards as
domestic foods and directs FDA to build an integrated national food safety
system in partnership with State and local authorities. The FSMA will
impact the State and local food safety professionals by relying on them to
help implement the FSMA.
Among the key findings of the FSMA Food Safety Working Group created
by President Obama was the need to modernize statutes that require
effective sanitation and preventive controls in food establishments. An
increasingly globalized food supply chain, the aging of our population,
increases in the number of immunocompromised and immunosuppressed
individuals, and the trend toward greater consumption of foods prepared
outside the home demand sustained vigilance by industry and the regulatory
community, from the Federal, State, and local level, to promote food safety
in retail and foodservice establishments.
Healthy People 2020 identifies food safety as important. According to
Healthy People 2020, foodborne illness is a preventable and underreported
public health problem. It presents a major challenge to both general and atrisk
populations. Each year, millions of illnesses in the United States can be
attributed to contaminated foods. Children younger than age 4 have the
highest incidence of laboratory-confirmed infections from:
� Campylobacter species
� Cryptosporidium species
� Salmonella species
� Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O157
� Shigella species
� Yersinia species