The US is more obsessed with food safety, but the food is, overall, just as safe (or just as dangerous, if you prefer) as elsewhere. Hard stats are difficult to come by, but Europe had a massive outbreak of E. coli in 2011 which mostly impacted people in Germany, and was variously blamed on an organic bean sprout farm in Germany, on fenugreek imported from Egypt, and on cucumbers imported from Spain. (It was probably the bean sprouts, although the evidence is circumstantial.)
The one exception is eggs. The US obsession with food safety has led to a law requiring eggs to be washed; ironically this removes a protective coating that protects eggs. In non-US countries you are vastly more likely to find a bit of dirt adhering to the shell of the egg, but you're a lot less likely to get salmonella. Whups.
> If there's a problem in your own kitchen
For E. coli, the problem originates on the farm, not the kitchen. The current best guess is that somehow human feces contaminated the manure an organic farm in Lower Saxony was using to grow bean sprouts, and boom, 4000 people sick and 51 dead.
It's not really about restaurant meals, or industrial farms, or globalization; it's about food safety being really hard.
The one exception is eggs. The US obsession with food safety has led to a law requiring eggs to be washed; ironically this removes a protective coating that protects eggs. In non-US countries you are vastly more likely to find a bit of dirt adhering to the shell of the egg, but you're a lot less likely to get salmonella. Whups.
> If there's a problem in your own kitchen
For E. coli, the problem originates on the farm, not the kitchen. The current best guess is that somehow human feces contaminated the manure an organic farm in Lower Saxony was using to grow bean sprouts, and boom, 4000 people sick and 51 dead.
It's not really about restaurant meals, or industrial farms, or globalization; it's about food safety being really hard.