Attribution of Pathogen-Specific Costs of Foodborne Illness to Food Commodity Groups—Combining a Costing Model with Expert Judgment

Abstract

Foodborne disease and its sequelae exert a significant cost on Australia through health care costs, lost productivity, and occasional fatal illness. While estimating the cost of illness for all foodborne pathogens or for specific pathogens has value in quantifying this disease burden, it is also informative to estimate costs by food commodity and to identify priority areas for improving food safety. We combined a cost of illness model for foodborne illness in Australia with an expert elicitation of the food commodities associated with illness for key pathogens. The total cost of the six modeled pathogens was 721 million (June 2023 AUD), with campylobacteriosis having the greatest overall cost (AUD 420 million). Across food categories, AUD 328 million was attributed to poultry, AUD 107 million to vegetables, while dairy, beef, and pork each had costs over AUD 55 million. Strong associations were found between Campylobacter and poultry (69% of campylobacteriosis cases attributed to poultry) and Yersinia and pork (54% of yersiniosis cases attributed to pork). This study highlights poultry as a key cause of foodborne illness in Australia, responsible for almost half of the total costs due to Campylobacter, non-typhoidal Salmonella, Yersinia enterocolitica, Listeria monocytogenes, and Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli.