The University hosted a lecture about food safety and common foodborne illnesses Monday at Burrill Hall.

James Slauch, professor of microbiology at the University,addressed a crowd of more than 50 students about this topic. He said 76 million people per year in the U.S. get a foodborne disease.

Although many of these cases are not diagnosed, about 325,000 people per year will require hospitalization and approximately 5,000 will die as a result of these foodborne illnesses, he added.

The University has not seen any cases of foodborne disease outbreaks in recent years, said David Lawrance, medical director at McKinley Health Center, although it can be hard to tell if a student has contracted one of these diseases.

“Most people think it’s a gastrointestinal illness, (with) vomiting or diarrhea — we see a lot of that (at McKinley),” Lawrance said. “We suspect that most of it isn’t foodborne.”

Part of the issue is that the symptoms of foodborne illnesses are common symptoms of other diseases. These symptoms include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, Lawrance said.

The increase of foodborne illnesses in the U.S. is likely a direct result of the globalization and industrialization of the food industry, Slauch said.

Addressing the issue of cantaloupe infected with listeria, Slauch said, “If (the growers) were the farm stand down the street, that would be bad enough, but they’re shipping this cantaloupe to however many states, and people across the country are becoming ill.”

Fortunately, that “farm stand down the street” is exactly where the University does most of its purchasing, said Dawn Aubrey, interim director of the University’s dining services.She said the University has not been affected much by national food recalls, like beef recalls in the past.

“Our local foods weren’t a problem. We were able to continue serving everything that we had served because we were serving beef that we had purchased from 97 miles away,” Aubrey said.

Even low-risk food is subjected to a rigorous safety procedure before it is served to University students.

“When it comes to purchasing, we have very strict purchasing guidelines as to what we will accept when it comes to produce, meats as far as the grading of meats,” she said. “We also require that our vendors are licensed, that they are regularly inspected and that they carry sufficient insurance… We also inspect their facilities as well as the vehicles they use when they deliver to us.”

The process then moves from the vendors’ facilities to the University itself.

“We have storekeepers that inspect the product when it arrives… They will reject any product at the dock that does not meet our criteria,” Aubrey said.

Food is then stored, carefully kept out of what is called the “danger zone” — that is, the range of temperatures from 41 to 139 degrees in which bacteria multiplies most rapidly.

The most important safety measure of all, though, is being informed, she said.

“We know what we are serving, we know where it is grown, and we know how it was handled,” Aubrey said.