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>Similarly, there's no mention of food-borne illnesses due to microbial contamination, again a higher risk in combined and processed meat (hamburgers, hot dogs, sausage etc.)

Have you read your own data?

>study of 4589 foodborne outbreaks attributed 46% of these hospitalizations and 43% of the deaths to meat

The majority of foodborne illnesses do not come from meat. If you are observant, you would notice that a disproportionate amount of things like E.coli outbreaks are associated to salads served in fast foods. And much of the risk associated with meat comes from a lack of hygiene or under-cooked meat. Chicken is a high risk of E.coli when under-cooked but it's much less dangerous than a damn lettuce when it's well done.

Regardless of ingredients (meat or pure vegetarian) there's also too many illnesses contracted because employees of restaurants are severely lacking in hygiene. Gastroenteritis causing pathogens should have ceased to exist if people were not so disgusting, going to the toilet without washing their hands.

The nice thing about such articles is that you can change the message without being incorrect.

> "Approximately 128,000 Americans are hospitalized and 3000 die each year from foodborne illness. A ten-year study of 4589 foodborne outbreaks attributed 54% of these hospitalizations and 57% of the deaths to vegetables. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the primary federal agency tasked with regulating food, is aware of these statistics, and characterizes them as “largely preventable.” It is becoming clear that modern vegetable production methods allow pathogens to spread with ease, creating great food safety risks."

Even better, you can read the cited study, and look at the footnotes, and read the relevant citation:

> "These percentages do not include illnesses and deaths caused by seafood. See John A. Painter et al., Attribution of Foodborne Illnesses, Hospitalizations, and Deaths to Food Commodities by Using Outbreak Data, United States, 1998-2008"

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/3/11-1866_article

Hospitalizations:

> "An estimated 26,000 (46%) annual hospitalizations were attributed to land animal commodities, 24,000 (41%) to plant commodities, and 3,000 (6%) to aquatic animal commodities (Table 2). Produce commodities accounted for 38% of hospitalizations and meat-poultry commodities for 22%. Dairy accounted for the most hospitalizations (16%), followed by leafy vegetables (14%), poultry (12%), and vine-stalk vegetables (10%) (Figure 2, panel B). Among the estimated 57,000 hospitalizations, 8% were not attributed to a pathogen, mainly because the dataset did not include data for Toxoplasma spp.

Deaths:

> An estimated 629 (43%) deaths each year were attributed to land animal, 363 (25%) to plant, and 94 (6%) to aquatic commodities (Table 3). Meat-poultry commodities accounted for 29% of deaths and produce 23%. Among the 17 commodities, poultry accounted for the most deaths (19%), followed by dairy (10%), vine-stalk vegetables (7%), fruits-nuts (6%), and leafy vegetables (6%) (Figure 2, panel C). Of the 278 deaths attributed to poultry, most were attributed to Listeria monocytogenes (63%) or Salmonella spp. (26%). Among the 1,451 estimated deaths, 25% were not attributed to a pathogen, mainly because the dataset did not include data for Toxoplasma spp."

The real conclusion here is that the food supply chain in the USA is poorly regulated and presents large health risks to consumers, and as the producers do not have to bear the costs of externalities (air and water pollution, increased disease, etc.) they are under no pressure to improve the situation.

Again, meat, like vegetables, fruits, grains, leafy produce, etc. - when produced under high standards (i.e. no pesticide/herbicide contamination, no hormones and antibiotics, no violations of food safety standards) is quite healthy to consume.

> This is a misleading headline. The study restricts its focus to unprocessed red meat, indeed the word 'unprocessed' appears 72 times in the study.

reading the headline I had zero expectation that this applied to processed meat

And of the hospitalizations and deaths not from meat, how many are due to animal agriculture? I believe most are due to cattle feces runoff into waterways.