How many unsolved foodbourne illnesses occurred today?

Because I am a food industry attorney, my reputation is invariably tied to the successes and failures of the food industry as a whole.  And, as a result, I tend to care deeply how the industry is doing.  What I have learned over the last decade is that, whether we choose to accept it or not, there are a lot of food companies, every day, that are selling products that are making people sick.  Just look, for instance, at the growing list of recent examples which include Blue Bell, Dole, General Mills and CRF.  In each of these examples, the companies involved were selling foods that had become unknowingly and intermittently contaminated with pathogens over long periods of time.  While some companies, like the examples I just cited, are eventually associated with resulting illnesses, the vast majority escape detection.  We now know it’s happening because, as a result of PulseNet, we can watch it happening. While this system has allowed the government to solve many high-profile outbreaks over the last 20 years (linking consumers sickened by a pathogen sharing a common DNA strain to a single food product), the vast majority of foodborne illnesses uploaded into the PulsenNet database remain unsolved. What this means is that, every year, there are a large number of food companies that are unknowingly processing and distributing foods that are contaminated with pathogens which are making people sick.