Washington ? In the week since mad cow disease was discovered in the United States, more than a million Americans were sickened by food they ate. About 6,000 became so ill they were hospitalized and nearly 100 died, according to federal health estimates.

But mad cow disease wasn’t the culprit. Indeed, not a single American is known to have contracted the human form of the disease from eating food in this country.

Instead, salmonella, E. coli, listeria and other dangerous bacteria routinely take a huge toll on public health, yet get little of the attention that’s now focused on the beef from one Washington state Holstein found infected with mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

“There is not enough attention to general food-borne diseases,” said Dr. Christopher Braden, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s chief of outbreak response and surveillance in the food-borne disease branch. “While bovine spongiform encephalopathy is of concern, it’s not the greatest public health concern we face in food-borne disease.”

The toll from food-borne disease is staggering: 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year, according to CDC estimates.

Salmonella, for instance, caused 32,000 confirmed illnesses last year — and many times that number probably were sickened by the bacteria but never had tests to confirm it.

“Certainly if this were a disease hitting the radar screen and it was the first time it had ever been discovered and there were 30,000 cases reported, it would be an uproar,” Braden said last week.

Organisms that consumers may never have heard of cause many illnesses.

Campylobacter, a bacteria associated with raw or undercooked poultry, causes about 2 million cases of diarrhea, nausea and vomiting each year, and sometimes causes life-threatening infections or triggers rare immune-system responses. Listeria monocytogenes, a cold-loving bacteria found in ready-to-eat lunchmeats and hot dogs, causes about 2,500 illnesses a year, and most of them must be hospitalized. About 500 will die, the CDC estimates.

Food safety advocates hope the furor over mad cow disease and calls for reform will help focus the attention of policy makers and the public on broader issues in farming and food manufacturing that could help reduce the number of Americans sickened by what they eat.

“I don’t think mad cow is a public health crisis,” said Carol Tucker Foreman, who heads the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America. “I do think we have a serious public health problem with regard to food-borne illness. And it’s not just meat and poultry, but fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs and fish.”

Advocates also have urged for years that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration be given the authority to order companies to recall tainted products. The current system allows only for voluntary company recalls, Foreman said.