Georgia has largely failed to reduce the number of illnesses caused by food-borne contamination during the past four years, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
The Atlanta-based CDC also noted that Georgia had the second-highest rate of salmonella in a 10-state study for 2008, which also included previous years.
"In Georgia, as in other states, there has been very little evidence of progress in food safety over the past four years," said Dr. Robert Tauxe, a top food safety official at the CDC.
Food-safety advocates said the report highlights the need to develop better practices.
"The CDC has opened the window and revealed that food-borne illness is a far more difficult problem to address than we had thought," said Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America's Food Policy Institute. "Government and industry have to live up to their roles in assuring our food is safe."
Georgia agriculture officials, who oversee food safety, say they have made progress in recent years.
Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin said the agency has increased the testing of Georgia foods, modernized the testing, and --- in the face of budget constraints --- shifted staff to put more inspectors in the field.
Georgia was on par with the other states studied in the report released Thursday, all of which have plateaued after decades of reducing the incidence of food-borne illness.
The other states were California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Tennessee. The CDC believes the demographics of these states makes them nationally representative.
The report comes amid salmonella scares involving peanuts and pistachios. The outbreak associated with peanuts and traced to a plant in southwest Georgia has sickened 690 people in 46 states.
Salmonella is the most common form of food poisoning, and Georgia had a rate of about 24 cases per 100,000 people in 2008, just behind the highest figure of 26 cases per 100,000 in New Mexico.
The CDC's Tauxe said he would not conclude that the Georgia food-safety system was broken, considering that many foods consumed in the state come from outside Georgia. Georgia's warmer climate may be more conducive to salmonella, he said.
But he did note the need for more inspections, food-related scientists and "more authority and regulations" for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Georgia lawmakers recently approved a bill making it a felony for food manufacturers not to report the discovery of salmonella or other food-borne diseases in food products. The bill requires the governor's approval.
Copyright 2009 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution