Federal food safety officials opened a two-day public meeting this morning to address Listeria monocytogenes contamination, an unusual step for a pathogen whose case numbers have remained unchanged for more than ten years.
The meeting, running in the auditorium of the Harvey W. Wiley Federal Building at the FDA's College Park campus in Maryland and streaming virtually, is the first in a planned series of workshops and webinars. The agency's own framing is blunt about why it is happening. Listeria is the fourth leading cause of death from foodborne illness in the United States, responsible for about 1,250 cases and 170 deaths a year, and incidence has remained essentially static for more than a decade despite continued prevention efforts. The CDC's own estimate of the annual burden puts the death toll at 172.
