HEALTH: Big and deadly: Major foodborne outbreaks spike sharply.

Major foodborne outbreaks in the United States have more than tripled in the last 20 years, and the germs most frequently implicated are familiar to most Americans: Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria.

In the most recent five-year period — from 2010 to 2014 — these multistate outbreaks were bigger and deadlier than in years past, causing more than half of all deaths related to contaminated food outbreaks, public health officials said Tuesday. A wide variety of foods were involved, ranging from vegetables and fresh fruits to beef and chicken. Some had never before been linked to outbreaks, such as the caramel apples, tainted with Listeria, that led to an outbreak in which seven people died and 34 were hospitalized in late 2014. . . .

CDC Director Thomas Frieden said the latest multistate outbreaks are more dangerous because they involve deadlier germs. “On average, there are about two per month, and they can be big and they can be lethal,” he said during the briefing. . . .

Imported foods accounted for 18 of the multistate outbreaks. Foods from Mexico, including mangoes and papayas, were the leading source in those events, followed by foods from Turkey such as pine nuts, tahini, and pomegranate seeds.

I’d like to see the CDC spending more time on issues like this, and less on things like gun control and playgrounds.