The swine industry has experienced rapid progress as intensive livestock production replaced small farms. Opponents to this type of production state sociological, ethical, environmental, and sanitary reasons, but often ignore or take for granted the rapid progress the industry has made. One area that illustrates this progress is food safety. The parasite Taenia solium causes 50,000 deaths per year worldwide, and was once the main cause of illness from pork. Now it is nearly eliminated in North American and European, and the infections usually only occur in developing countries still using traditional pig farming. Trichinella spiralis has declined from 400 cases/year in the USA in the 1940s to 72 cases between 1997-2001, and Toxoplasma gondii presence has been reduced by 90% in swine in the last 25 years. Salmonella outbreaks still remain a risk in the pork industry; however, contamination is more of a risk from processing carcasses rather than production standards. As well, technologies like irradiation are used to prevent contamination, and will only improve in the future. One of the challenges the pork industry will continue to face is communicating to the public all of the advances that have been, and will be, made.