As in previous years, the latest federal data on trends in foodborne illness rates are a mixed bag. “The overall outlook is that there is some good news and I think we can learn from that, but that the news is not all good and there’s still a lot of work to do,” said Patricia Griffin, chief of the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases. According to the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet), there were a total of 19,542 infections, 4,445 hospitalizations and 71 deaths reported in 2014. Some types of infections declined, some increased, and some stayed the same. FoodNet is a collaboration between CDC, 10 state health departments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Food and Drug Administration that tracks incidents of Campylobacter, Listeria, Salmonella, Shigella, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) O157, STEC non-O157, Vibrio, Yersinia, Cryptosporidium and Cyclospora. The number of laboratory-confirmed illnesses falls far below the actual number of people sickened by foodborne pathogens each year. CDC estimates that 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths are linked to foodborne illness annually. CDC uses FoodNet data to help develop these estimates. Along with the regulatory agencies, the agency also uses it to track progress in reducing infections.