The annual cost of foodborne illness in Australia by food commodities and pathogens

In 2023, FSANZ commissioned the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University to estimate the annual cost of foodborne illness in Australia by food commodities and pathogens. The project builds on prior work by the team at the Australian National University to estimate the cost of foodborne illness in Australia. 

Foodborne disease costs Australia AUD 2.81 billion each year (2023 inflation-adjusted estimate), with high-cost illnesses including campylobacteriosis and its sequelae (annual cost of AUD 420 million), non-typhoidal salmonellosis and its sequelae (AUD 161 million), norovirus (AUD 147 million), and listeriosis (AUD 90 million). However, attribution of these costs to specific food commodity groups remains a challenge for Australia and elsewhere.  This information is obviously important when making regulatory decisions. 

Expert elicitation has been used to create estimates to better support decision making by regulators and potentially others. Expert elicitation is a structured approach to obtaining probabilistic belief statements from experts. This project combines attribution estimates from Australia’s leading microbiologists and other subject matter experts. An expert elicitation process was carried out for FSANZ, by the University of Melbourne, to attribute illness due to eight pathogens (non-typhoidal Salmonella species, Campylobacter species, Listeria monocytogenes, Toxoplasma gondii, STEC, Yersinia species, Vibrio species, and Bacillus cereus) to specific foods. The separate food groups included in the elicitation were beef, lamb, pork, poultry, eggs, dairy (milk and cream, fresh uncured cheese, brined cheese, soft-ripened cheese, firm-ripened cheese), finfish, crustaceans, molluscs, fruit, grains and seeds, nuts, vegetables (fungi, leafy vegetables and herbs, root vegetables, sprouts, vine-stalk), and other.