There are about 48 million cases of food poisoning in the U.S. each year

Eating a spicy tuna roll shouldn’t make you sick. Nor should eating cantaloupe, cold cuts, peanut butter or onions, all of which were linked to food poisoning that sickened and killed people in the U.S. within the past five years.

Reports last week of a salmonella outbreak, possibly related to sushi, serve as a timely reminder of why the Obama administration must expedite a plan to modernize the country’s food-safety regulations, which haven’t been updated since the Great Depression.

So far, more than 100 people in 19 states have been stricken, all by an unusual strain of the bacteria known as salmonella Barielly. No deaths have been reported. Many of those who fell ill told health officials they had eaten sushi in recent days, though tracing the source of food poisoning is often difficult.

There’s a chance that if sushi were the culprit, the Food Safety and Modernization Act would have prevented it. Passed two years ago with wide bipartisan support, the law is designed to stop food contamination at the source, not simply react to incidences of food-borne illness. The deadline for issuing the rules to implement the law was Jan. 4, pending a review of the regulations by the Office of Management and Budget.

There are about 48 million cases of food poisoning in the U.S. each year and as many as 3,000 deaths. Although the incidence of food poisoning hasn’t increased much, the virulence of individual episodes is on the rise, particularly from fresh produce, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Last year, cantaloupe tainted by Listeria was responsible for 30 deaths, the most lethal case of food poisoning in U.S. history.

Because the country’s food supply is increasingly concentrated among a handful of large producers and distributors, the potential for mass poisonings is growing. Some of the 50,000 food-processing plants in the U.S. go as long as a decade without being inspected.

Food-borne illness costs the U.S. as much as $77 billion a year in medical treatment, lost productivity and reduced sales of products implicated in contamination episodes, according to an analysis by a former FDA economist. The expense of the tainted peanut butter recall and subsequent decline in demand alone cost the industry an estimated $1 billion.

The food industry would prefer that the costs of more vigilant regulation fall to the American taxpayer. But in light of the harm that food poisoning causes to victims, the economy and the industry itself, the Obama administration should press forward with building support for user fees. The food industry should relent and back them. After all, many manufacturers supported the legislation before anyone thought of asking them to pay for making it work.