U.S.' struggle to contain foodborne illness showed little progress in 2007, although they had a constant incidence between 2004 and 2006, according to a government report released on Thursday.

“We can’t say we’ve made tremendous progress in the last year. The most salient observation we see is that there is not a particularly important change from the last few years. A lot of things have been going on to improve food safety and we still think they are likely to bear fruit ... but we have not seen a particular decrease in the important sections that we are tracking,” Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control’s Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases told a news conference, according to Reuters.

The report’s findings came from the CDC’s Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network – FoodNet – that monitors foodborne disease in 10 states with the help of the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture.

According to the report, there were 17,883 confirmed cases of foodborne infections in 2007. Salmonella was by far the leader of all foodborne infections with an incidence rate of 14.92 per 100,000 people. Second were campylobacter infections with an incidence rate of 12.79 per 100,000 people, while shigella infections came third with an incidence rate of 6.26 per 100,000 people.

Cases of infection with the waterborne parasite cryptosporidium, which causes diarrhea, actually went up in 2007, compared with 2004-2006. E. coli infections fell until 2004, but then increased in the following years.

Tauxe stated: “Food safety is a continuing problem that starts at the farm and continues through the food chain all the way to the kitchen.” Also, he added that one of the CDC’s goals is to reduce the overall number of foodborne infections by 2010, an objective that might be hard to hit if we consider the present statistics.

However, consumers can reduce their risk from foodborne illness by following safe food-handling recommendations and avoiding the consumption of unpasteurized milk, raw or undercooked oysters, raw or undercooked eggs, raw or undercooked ground beef, and undercooked poultry.

The report findings were published in the April 11 issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.