Food poisoning has always been a common risk of food preparation. Anyone who has had a "24 hour virus" probably actually had a bacterial food bourn illness instead.
Usually food poisoning is a local event - one household, one restaurant.... and you never even hear about it. If someone gets salmonella from their own unwashed apple, it's unlikely to get noticed, let alone reported. However in food manufacturing, it isn't one family or one town affected, but potentially thousands across the country.
It's like air travel vs driving. Air travel is much safer statistically, with far fewer fatalities anually than in auto accidents. But more attention is given to a single plane crash than a single auto accident, because it is less common and because more people are affected in one incident. But this actually makes plane crashes (and mass food poisoning) seem alot more common than they actually are.
While it's much more likely we will at some point poison ourselves by our own mistakes in the kitchen, we're more afraid of someone else doing it, mostly because of the (mistaken) perception that there is less of a risk when we are the ones in control.
|
