Tremendous progress has been made in providing consumers with food that is consistently safe. Credit for this success is shared among industry, innovators, researchers, public-health surveillance and regulators (yes, regulators most certainly deserve a piece of the credit). At the same time we talk of successes, however, we are still faced with well-known and new challenges. And we should remain mindful that while statistics serve as a valuable metric of success, statistics are representative of individuals who have suffered, sometimes seriously so, from a foodborne illness — at the individual level, statistics can be much less meaningful.