World Food Safety Day is June 7, 2026
Every few years a number comes along that stops me cold, even after three decades of doing this work. This week, that number is 866 million.
That is how many people the World Health Organization estimates get sick from unsafe food every single year. And 1.5 million of them die. The new WHO estimates, published this week in The Lancet Global Health and timed to World Food Safety Day on June 7, are the most complete accounting of the global toll of foodborne disease we have ever had. They cover 42 hazards — bacteria, viruses, parasites, and, for the first time on this scale, chemical contaminants like arsenic, lead, and methylmercury — across 194 countries from 2000 through 2021.
I have spent my entire career representing the people behind statistics like these. The toddler with hemolytic uremic syndrome on dialysis after eating a hamburger. The grandmother who never came home from the hospital after a Listeria-contaminated cantaloupe. The families I have sat with in living rooms across this country who had no idea that a meal could take everything from them. So, when WHO puts a number like 866 million on the table, I don’t see a spreadsheet. I see 866 million living rooms.
The part that should make all of us angry
Here is what I cannot get past: children under five are only about 9% of the world’s population, but they account for nearly a third of all foodborne illness — and they bear a brutal share of the deaths, mostly from diarrheal disease. The smallest, most vulnerable people on earth are paying the highest price for a problem we know how to prevent.
And it is wildly unequal. WHO found that Africa and South-East Asia together carry roughly three-quarters of the world’s foodborne illnesses and about 60% of the deaths. A child’s risk of dying from contaminated food has nothing to do with what the child did, and almost everything to do with where that child was born — whether there is clean water, reliable refrigeration, basic sanitation, and a doctor within reach.
There is one bright spot worth saying out loud: the overall