Buy safe food and handle it properly. And tell your legislator you want sensible food-safety legislation that won't endanger sustainable family farms.

A type of bacteria found in undercooked beef caused $19 billion in costs relating to foodborne illness.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Could a major weapon in cutting healthcare costs involve getting the E. coli and out of our salads? A new report suggests doing just that might put a dent in the problem. Foodborne illnesses that could largely be prevented are costing the nation a whopping $150 billion-plus a year, according to a new study by The Produce Safety Project, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts at Georgetown University. The report was released last week just as the latest widespread recall—a salmonella-tainted food-enhancing chemical used widely in chips, dips, and dressings—hit the headlines.

THE DETAILS: The estimated price tag of foodborne illnesses (calculated by a former U.S. Food and Drug administration economist) hits $152 billion annually, and includes health-related costs, such as treatment of the sick, quality-of-life losses, and loss of functionality and productivity. "It doesn't even include the economic impact a recall can have on a company or grower," says Sandy Eskin, director of the food-safety campaign at The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Here are some stats from the report:

• Costs associated with salmonella topped $14 billion.

• The average foodborne illness case costs an average of $1,850, which includes lost productivity and possible treatment costs.

• Costs related to camphylobacter (ingested from contaminated, undercooked poultry or other meat) hit nearly $19 billion.

WHAT IT MEANS: Given the fact that there seems to be a new foodborne illness outbreak every few weeks in this country, you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks we don’t need food-safety reform. However, some sustainable-farming experts worry that a one-size-fits-all approach will wind up putting small, sustainable family farms out of business. Eskin, who is pushing hard for food-safety reform, says she understands the concern but doesn’t believe even small, local organic growers who sell to their communities should be exempt from new food-safety laws. “I think many people believe that a shorter food chain decreases the opportunity for contamination, and there’s a certain logic to that,” Eskin says. “Our thought, though, is that food should be safe no matter the source. Local, national, conventional, organic—it needs to be safe.”

Organic-farming advocates say the danger is that legislation that targets food contamination is generally borne out of large, industrial farming operations—and the strain of complying with them could raise prices or push small, sustainable farmers out of business. "We do need food-safety reform because the giant agribusinesses are poisoning our citizenry," says Mark Kastel, codirector of the Cornucopia Institute, a nonprofit group promoting family-scale farming through advocacy and research. "But if [legislators] choose a one-size-fits-all approach, they're going to probably damage the safest farmers and food producers in our country." A small organic family farm, for example, would be required to perform the same tracking and monitoring duties and fund the same germ tests as an industrial operation.

Read on to find out how food-safety legislation could actually hurt sustainable farmers if Congress enacts one-size-fits-all requirements.