About Restaurant Food Safety

Fast facts

• CDC estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) gets sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases.1
• Foodborne illnesses cost the U.S. about $17.6 billion per year.2
• Many of these illnesses occur as part of a foodborne illness outbreak; 841 foodborne illness outbreaks were reported to CDC in 2017.3
• More than half of all foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States are associated with restaurants, delis, banquet facilities, schools, and other institutions.3

What CDC is doing

Practice-based research

• The Environmental Health Specialists Network (EHS-Net) connects environmental health specialists, epidemiologists, and lab professionals from CDC, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Department of Agriculture, and 8 state and local health departments.
• Since 2000, CDC has funded state and local health departments for more than 20 retail food safety studies, leading to 52 publications.

Prevention tools and guidance

• CDC provides the National Environmental Assessment Reporting System (NEARS) for health departments.
• Our free training helps food safety staff address environmental causes of foodborne illnesses and outbreaks.
• Plain language summaries guide outbreak prevention strategies.

What you can do

Restaurant managers are in a key position to influence the policies and practices in their restaurant that affect food safety.

• Explore findings on specific practices and foods linked to outbreaks.
• Learn about our work to improve investigations of foodborne outbreaks.

The public can follow our food safety tips for dining out to help prevent food poisoning. Tips include checking restaurant inspection scores, ordering food cooked to a safe internal temperature, and more.