Welcome  to  Public  Health  moment from  the  University  of  Minnesota. The  United  States  has  made little  progress  on  preventing  food  borne  illness, despite  what  Americans  have  been  told  in  recent  months. That's  according  to  infectious disease  expert  Michael  Osterholm, a  professor  at  the  University  of Minnesota  School  of  Public  Health. Over  the  past  six  weeks, there  have  been  two  major  news  stories about  food  safety  that  have  come  out  that  have suggested  that  in  fact the  food  supply  is  getting  safer  and  it  will  even get  safer  the  future  based  on  recent  legislation. First  of  all,  is  the  fact  that  the  study  that the  Centers  for  Disease  Control  and Prevention  released  in  December, suggesting  that  there  was  big  differences  in the  numbers  of  foodborne  disease  cases, including  deaths  between  1999  and  now actually  is  not  the  case, but  really  for  the  last  11 years  the  numbers  have  been  flat, that  basically  there  haven't  been  any  major  changes. The  bottom  line  message  is  that  foodborne  disease, steel,  is  an  important  problem  in  this  country. That  it  hasn't  gotten  much  worse, but  it  also  hasn't  gotten  much  better. Another  problem  in  addressing  food borne  illness,  Osterholm  says, is  that  Congress  passed the  Federal  Food  Modernization  Act  earlier  this  year, but  with  no  funding  attached. And  when  people  say  well,  but  in  this  very  cash strapped  kind  of  budget  tight  world,  why  do  that? The  cost  benefit  of  doing  this  is  huge. The  cost  of  foodborne  disease  far, far  outstrips  the  investment  in  trying to  prevent  it  for  public  health  moment. I'm  Mark  Anker,  Brits.