“48 Million Sickened Every Year by Tainted Meat” was the headline a couple of weeks ago for a story by Alternet , an on-line media community that claims to fight the “vitriol and disinformation coming from right wing media.”

They were referring to another article that appeared a few days earlier in The Guardian that had some very skewed numbers in an attempt to keep “Dirty Meat” from the United States out of the UK.

These two stories had so much “disinformation” in them that I hardly know where to begin.

That 48 million is a number that the CDC claims represents foodborne illness victims, but the CDC says that only 9 million are due to 31 known pathogens. That leaves 39 million caused by unknown pathogens, and Lord knows what foods. Certainly not all are from meat.

Of the 9 million known pathogens, the CDC says 5.5million are caused by viruses such as Norovirus, but in a press release citing these numbers, the CDC says “It is now known that most Norovirus is not spread by the foodborne route.”

We are now down to about 3.5 million supposed foodborne illnesses per year caused mostly by 7 bacteria, and we know that Salmonella is credited by CDC for 1.3 million of those GI illnesses.

And we also know from the CDC that green leafy vegetables are the number one source for Salmonella foodborne illnesses.

I think you all are getting my point by now.

The Guardian also noted the 1 million cases of Salmonella in the United States, and stated that in the UK “officially recorded incidents is relatively low”, with ”just under 10,000 laboratory confirmed cases in 2016.”

That is comparing apples to oranges.

If you check the CDC’s web site, you will find that there were 7,728 laboratory confirmed Salmonella cases in 2016 in the United States in the CDC’s FoodNet system.

FoodNet consists of sites in 10 states representing about 15 percent of Americans.

You see the difference is that CDC takes that 7,728 number and mulitplies it; first by a factor to extrapolate to represent the 300 million U.S. residents, then secondly by an even larger number to account for the hundreds of thousands of mild cases that never seek health care advise or treatment.

So, poof! — the 7,729 becomes 1.3 million.

The UK has 60 million residents. So 1 of every 6,000 had a confirmed Salmonella infection in 2016.

The FoodNet system has 50 million residents with 7,728 confirmed Salmonella infections, or roughly one confirmed case for every 6,000 residents living within the FoodNet sites.

Isn’t that amazing? Do the math and the numbers are so similar to be scary.

But figures lie and liars figure, and Boy Howdy did these two publications figure!

Setting the record straight; misleading headlines on meat’s role in foodborne illnesses

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