Abstract
Economic burden of foodborne illness estimates is an important measure for setting policy priorities and assessing the efficacy of potential interventions. This chapter presents estimates for the health-related cost of foodborne illness in the United States. Updated models and data are used to examine illness costs across a number of dimensions. Specifically, two alternative economic models (similar to alternative approaches used by major regulatory agencies in the United States) are employed to assess total cost and cost per case estimates at the national, state, and pathogen levels.
Similar to previous studies, the approach used here integrates a replication of CDC’s illnesses model with the economic models to produce estimates that reflect uncertainty in both illness model and economic model parameters. Monte Carlo analysis is used to incorporate parameter distributions across the combined model.
I estimate aggregate economic costs for all foodborne illnesses in the United States to be $60.9 billion (90% CI, $37.2–$90.8 billion) or $90.2 billion (90% CI, $34.2–$161.8 billion), depending on model used. The corresponding cost per case estimates are $1275 (90% CI, $805–$1970) and $1887 (90% CI, $720–$3492), respectively. These costs vary substantially across pathogens and states.
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Abbreviations
- CDC:
-
Centers for Disease Control Research and Prevention/US
- COI:
-
Cost of illness
- CPI:
-
Consumer Price Index
- FDA:
-
Food and Drug Administration/US
- ICD-9:
-
The International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision
- NIS:
-
National Inpatient Sample
- NDSS:
-
National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System
- NORS:
-
National Outbreak Reporting System
- PFGE:
-
Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis
- PulseNet:
-
National Molecular Subtyping Network for Foodborne Disease Surveillance
- QALY:
-
Quality-adjusted life year
- STEC:
-
Shiga-toxin E. coli
- VSL:
-
Value of a statistical life
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Scharff, R.L. (2018). The Economic Burden of Foodborne Illness in the United States. In: Roberts, T. (eds) Food Safety Economics. Food Microbiology and Food Safety(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92138-9_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92138-9_8
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