Food manufacturers have been able to get away with enough sloppiness to kill people, with nothing worse than fines as a result. Even though the percent of people getting sick or dying due to bad manufacturing practices is low, it's happening often enough to know at least 2 things:

1. There isn't enough incentive (punishment) for food manufacturers to much better ensure safety, and

2. It's somehow considered acceptable for hundreds or thousands of consumers, through no fault of their own, to get sick or die from tainted food each year.

I would be disturbed if the trust levels were higher. That would mean nobody's paying attention.

So 80% of the people don't trust that the food they're eating is safe, but they eat it anyway?

@Cant_stop_the_rock: Exact same thought I had. There has to be a flaw here - either in the survey or us.

I don't get caught up in all the recall hype. There is always bound to be a batch of bad food somewhere in the supply line, just like any other good. As long as they can tell me what batch is recalled, I will ensure that I am not eating it. Won't make me change brands or what have you.

I have confidence in our food supply, though it takes some common sense and a little work to know what you are eating. Should it be up to manufacturers to provide such information? Sure. But it should be our responsibility to know what the hell we are buying.

@Shoelace: No manufacturing process is going to be 100% perfect, and there comes a certain point where it's absolutely not worth pumping extra money into the system for an ever so slight increase in safety.

As it stands now, the largest and most widely publicized food safety failure (the salmonella-tainted peanut butter recall) affected only 0.0002% of people in this country. That's hardly a cause for concern, nor is it a cause for all of the attention that the whole situation received.

@CumaeanSibyl: There's a huge difference between "paying attention" and being "unjustly paranoid." I'd guess that these low trust levels are mostly a result of the latter. Educated and informed folks would likely not be caught up in all the hype, and thus maintain a relatively level degree of trust in a statistically safe industry.

@Taliskan:

Apart from buying only whole vegetables, fruits, and dead animals directly from producers, how do you recommend going about that? Unless you have complete access from the fields to the store shelves and all spaces in between, processed food is of unknown quality and largely unknown quantity. If that's my responsibility, then I'm failing miserably at it.

@supercereal: Would you consider it a cause for concern if you or someone you cared about was one of those 0.0002% of people?

There's a big difference between 100% perfect manufacturing processes - which I doubt anyone expects - and food manufacturing facilities that can continue operating for years with failed quality tests and rodent carcasses and feces on site.

Oh, great, something for Americans to worry themselves sick over.

@yagisencho: When was the last time you or your family were sickened by grocery store food that was not improperly prepared, improperly stored, or used past it's date?

Friends? Acquaintances? Even in the same town?

Nothing is perfect, but as far as I can tell they are doing a darn good job of bringing safe food to market despite the recent hysteria.

@Shoelace: every new regulation and every dollar spent on enforcement has to come from somewhere. It either ends up in taxes or in the cost of the food. Tradeoffs everywhere. What if the cost of saving those 0.0002% cases was that another few thousand died from starvation every year?

@snowmoon: Plus, keep in mind the statistic I threw out represents all those who died AND were sickened to some degree. The number of people who strictly died (with all due respect, it was a paltry 9) is 0.000003%. Not to sound insensitive, but from a purely business standpoint, it really may not be worth any excess amount of money for added regulation in this case. More people die yearly from self-induced salmonella poisoning by improperly preparing their food.

Nonetheless, I would appreciate it if companies would maintain a basic and appropriate level of sanitation for any facility that processes food. If anything, money should be spent on additional enforcement rather than added regulation.

@snowmoon: Sounds unlikely. I don't think people on the edge of starvation are eating peanut butter. Also, as mentioned earlier, people are not expecting 100% perfection in manufacturing. The cost of reducing the 0.0002% illness/death rate to say 0.000002% should be substantially less than trying for 0.0%.

@Shoelace: Correction: 'than trying for a guarantee of 0.0%'.

@snowmoon: People aren't expecting perfect. They're expecting better than we've seen recently..a series of national recalls of unrelated products due to widespread sickness and death. These gaps in quality assurance, for reasons of greed, corruption, and/or inadequate oversight (vs. accidents), need to be filled. It costs money to improve quality but it also costs money to visit doctors, buy medicines, miss work, and arrange funerals.

@Shoelace: "widespread sickness and death" - please backup that strong statement with facts, if it is so "widespread" it should be easy to show in statistics.

@Cant_stop_the_rock: "Safe" is a pretty broad term. I would say I trust very little food to be safe in all situations, but I think that that vast majority of food is safe when properly prepared. (Raw beef: not safe. Properly cooked beef: safe.)

That's why I get particularly bothered by E. coli appearances in vegetables, since they're not going to be cooked to a temp that will kill the bacteria.

@snowmoon: Fact: It made and stayed (for weeks, not hours or days) on the national news after thousands of people sickened or died across the US.

Nitpick away.

Hopefully this survey was accompanied with another question, "do you care about the food supply?" I have been "an eater" for some 25-years and while I may not "trust" my food supply (I don't even know what that means), I am particularly indifferent to it. I watch what I eat when it comes to calorie intake and fat content, but generally, I will eat *anything* regardless of where it's come from.

If I visit the local grocery store and punch someone in the stomach, chances are pretty good that I'm going to spend a few months in jail.

If a food producer gives 10,000 people a stomach ache, going so far as to kill a few people, then shouldn't someone go to jail for doing their job so poorly?

@Shoelace: The amount of time something "stays on the national news" is hardly a reasonable indicator of anything. Panic and fear drive good stories, and if something does that, it'll stay in the news for ages regardless of how much of a threat it is.

In other words, that fact is completely and utterly meaningless.

Many more people died from while driving, so why not put money toward something that is far, far more dangerous. People under prepare food all the time, and if you can't cook your food as required for safe consumption, then you sure can't blame the industry for the consumers' stupidity.

@jblack:

The monumental task of quickly determining who or what exactly is at fault in such a scenario could be mitigated by the implementation of full digitization of the supply chain from "farm to fork."

As consumers, we would better know from where our food originates, and producers not at fault would not have to bear the costs of a recall.

Improved efficiency, enhanced transparency; everyone benefits from such a system.

Unless they've got something to hide...

@Cant_stop_the_rock: As opposed to not eating? Ever try that?

None of the statistics you quote support the article's headline.