Home Food Safety The High Cost of E. coli and Salmonella Food Poisoning

The High Cost of E. coli and Salmonella Food Poisoning

Americans pay about $3.13 billion a year in costs incurred each year by Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 alone, according to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP).

The center is reporting figures gathered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS). As seen in the chart below, the ERS used estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to come up with cost estimates for both E. coli and Salmonella cases annually. The numbers for Salmonella costs are based on the CDC’s estimate of almost 1.4 million Salmonella cases each year, which includes 415 deaths. The average cost per case is an estimated $1,896.

Pathogen	CDC estimate of annual number of cases	ERS cost estimate (2009 dollars)
Campylobacter (foodborne sources)	2,000,000
Salmonella (all sources)	1,397,187	$2,649,413,401
Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O157 (STEC O157) (all sources)	73,480	$478,381,766
Non-O157 shiga toxin-producing E. coli (non-STEC O157) (all sources)	31,229
Listeria (all sources)	2,797

The CDC numbers of E coli O157 cases are significantly lower, at 73,480 cases a year with 61 deaths, however the per-case cost of $6,510 is much higher than Salmonella cases.

According to CIDRAP:

“The ERS has posted an online “Foodborne Illness Cost Calculator” that allows Web users to come up with their own estimates of the cost of foodborne illnesses for a state or region or for a given outbreak. The ERS’s estimates, which have been used in cost-benefit and impact analyses, include assumptions about disease incidence, outcome severity, and medical and productivity costs.”

Currently the only pathogens available in the calculator are Salmonella and E. coli O157, however, the ERS is planning on adding Listeria, Campylobacter, and other strains of E. coli (non-0157 shiga toxin-producing E. coli such as ecoli 0111 and E. coli 0145). The types of costs taken into consideration by the USDA’s ERS include:

Medical costs
Time missed from work due to illness
Cost of premature death

However, they do NOT include costs such as:

Pain and suffering
Travel
Child care

A similar report released in March by The Produce Safety Project, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts at Georgetown University, estimated much higher numbers, with a total cost of $152 billion per year for all pathogens, $14.6 billion for Salmonella and $993 million for E. coli 0157.

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