Details about this story

• Source: Scripps Howard News Service
• Date: November 19, 2006
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Thomas Hargrove
• Topics: Safety
• Data Types: Federal Data
• Description/Excerpt: Americans play a sort of food-poisoning Russian roulette depending on where they live, an investigation by Scripps Howard News Service found. Slovenly restaurants, disease-infested food-processing plants and other sources of infectious illness go undetected all over the country, but much more frequently in some states than others. Scripps studied 6,374 food-related disease outbreaks reported by every state to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from Jan. 1, 2000, through Dec. 31, 2004. The causes of nearly two-thirds of the outbreaks in that period were officially listed as "unknown."
• Methodology: See explainer