The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that some 48 million Americans annually develop food-borne illnesses, about half of which are contracted from food served at a restaurant. You can read the CDC report here.
How do all these food safety issues get started? Here's the breakdown from the CDC report:
-
62% -- The percentage of restaurants in the study whose workers did not wash their hands after handling raw ground beef with their bare hands.
-
40% -- The percentage of kitchen managers who said they did not always designate certain cutting boards only for raw chicken. Poultry is the No. 1 cause of death from food-borne illness in the United States.
-
80% -- The percentage of kitchen managers who said they did not always use a thermometer to ensure that hamburgers were cooked to the proper temperature. More than half in the study did not use thermometers when cooking chicken.
-
20% -- The percentage of restaurant workers who said they had worked a shift in the past year while sick with vomiting or diarrhea.
