A widely held belief among food safety experts is that the U.S. beef industry has made enormous strides in the past two decades to reduce outbreaks and recalls associated with beef. One of the many measures initiated by industry to help reduce illness associated with beef has been the Beef Safety Conference, held each year by the North American Meat Association.

This year’s conference occurred earlier this month in Chicago, and the organizers didn’t shy away from the hard statistics regarding how much more room for improvement is left when it comes to beef and harmful pathogens.

The conference included a presentation on beef-related illness data by L. Hannah Gould, Ph.D., leader of the National Outbreak Reporting System Team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Despite the two decades of progress made to reduce beef-related outbreaks, beef is still the third most common food commodity to be associated with illness, just behind fish and dairy, Gould said.

Anywhere from 11 to 28 percent of the U.S. population is estimated to consume ground beef raw or uncooked, Gould said. And, with 25 billion pounds of beef consumed in the U.S. each year, there is ample opportunity for foodborne illness.

CDC counted at least 75 outbreaks associated with beef over the five-year period between 2009 and 2013. Of those, 35 percent were caused by E. coli O157:H7 and 23 percent by Salmonella, leading Gould to focus on both of those pathogens in her presentation.

The presentation was split into two parts based on two separate papers CDC plans to publish in the coming months. The first is a 10-year update to CDC’s previous 10-year summary of E. coli outbreaks, while the other summarizes a history of Salmonella outbreaks caused by beef dating back to 1973.

Because neither paper has been released yet, Gould told Food Safety News that the data reported in the presentation should be considered preliminary and unpublished.

E. coli

E. coli O157:H7, the pathogen most commonly associated with ground beef, causes an estimated 96,000 illnesses, 3,200 hospitalizations and 31 deaths in the U.S. each year, adding up to $405 million in annual healthcare expenses.

CDC tracked 391 E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks in the 10 years between 2003 and 2012. Between those outbreaks, the agency confirmed 4,930 cases of illness, with 1,274 (26 pe