High standards of food hygiene should prevent the contamination and multiplication of food poisoning bacteria in food. Trends of food poisoning statistics are often used as a measure of hygiene standards or as an indication of the success or failure of control systems or enforcement procedures.

Unfortunately, national statistics on the reported number of confirmed food poisoning cases are unavailable. Furthermore, trends in reported food poisoning statistics can be seriously distorted by factors that may have nothing to do with hygiene standards, such as the inclusion of “infectious intestinal pathogens”, which may or may not be transmitted by food, for example, viruses.

Notifications of food poisoning collected through doctors reports include cases that are bacteriologically unconfirmed and many cases of persons who are suffering from diarrhoea and/or vomiting that may not be foodborne, and should not therefore, be used to indicate trends in food poisoning or hygiene standards.

In the absence of information on the number of confirmed food poisoning cases, alternative statistics should be used by persons interested in trends of food poisoning. Arguably, the most representative statistics of actual trends of food poisoning are laboratory isolations relating to specific food poisoning organisms such as salmonella.

Taken from Hygiene for Management, Sprenger, R.A. (2004) Buy the book here

Reported cases of Food Poisoning
Outbreaks of foodborne infectious intestinal disease
(excluding private residences) (1995 - 2004)

Laboratory Epidemiological data for Infectious Diseases, (England and Wales)

Campylobacter spp. 1994 - 2004
E. coli O157 1994 - 2003
Norovirus 1994 - 2003
Salmonella Isolates 1995 - 2004