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WASHINGTON – U.S. Representative Diana DeGette, Vice Chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, released the following statement regarding the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) latest announcement that the number of sickened individuals has climbed to 1,017, and that people with impaired immune systems should avoid eating certain peppers:

“It is unacceptable that people continue to get sick while the nation’s food safety agency cannot determine the source of the outbreak,” said DeGette. “There are more than one thousand confirmed cases to date, but by CDC estimates the actual number of people sickened  could be as much as 38 times higher.  Studies indicate that for every diagnosed case, about 38 more remain untested and therefore unreported.  This should sound the alarm bells in protecting the public health of the American consumer.

“Again, I ask: what more will it take for us to implement a comprehensive food traceability system?”

A 1999 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food Related Illness and Death in the United States, suggests that the total number of assumed cases are assumed to be 38 times the number of reported cases [pg. 619]. Rep. DeGette, who is author of traceability legislation, H.R. 3485, which she first introduced in 2002, would set up a food product traceability system that would track food products from the farm to the fork.