Determining Infectious Doses of Foodborne Illness Agents

The incidence of foodborne disease continues to increase in the United States, with infections from five of eight tracked pathogens rising, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) comparing data from 2016–2018 with 2019 numbers (Tack et al. 2020). CDC data show that approximately one in six Americans (or 48 million people) get sick from foodborne disease each year, 128,000 of them are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from these illnesses.

Foodborne illnesses ar…