Estimating the burden of food-borne illness in Canada

The Public Health Agency of Canada estimates that each year about 1 in 8 Canadians (4 million people) get sick from the food they eat. Four pathogens cause about 90% of the 1.6 million illnesses caused by known pathogens: Norovirus (1 million cases), Clostridium perfringens (177,000 cases), Campylobacter (145,000 cases) and nontyphoidal Salmonella (88,000 cases). These estimates are based on multiple complementary disease surveillance systems and the peer-reviewed literature. Understanding the burden of food-borne illness is useful for decision-makers, supporting the development of food safety and public health interventions, for research and for consumer education. Future efforts will focus on estimating the number of food-borne hospitalizations and deaths, the economic cost of food-borne illness and the burden of water-borne illness in order to provide crucial information to support research, policy and action.