ATLANTA -- Americans didn't suffer more food poisoning last year despite high-profile outbreaks involving peanut butter, pot pies and other foods.

But it's not getting better, either. Although there have been significant declines in certain food-borne illnesses since the late 1990s, all the improvements occurred before 2004, federal health officials said in a report released Thursday.

A food safety advocacy group called the report discouraging.

"We don't consider this a success at all. We want to see these numbers going down," said Nancy Donley, president of Safe Tables Our Priority, which was founded by victims of food poisoning.

The new numbers were collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It partners with state health departments to check labs in 10 states to count confirmed food poisonings caused by intestinal bugs.

Salmonella remained the most common cause of food poisoning, causing about 6,800 lab-confirmed illnesses. That translates to a rate of about 15 cases for every 100,000 people. Most experts say those numbers are lower than reality, however, because only a fraction of food poisoning cases get reported or confirmed by laboratories.

The researchers don't address how many people died. But in general, the CDC estimates that 76 million people get sick, more than 300,000 are hospitalized, and 5,000 Americans die each year from food-borne illness

The new research appears in Thursday's issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Campylobacter was the next most common causes of illness, with a rate of about 13 cases per 100,0000. Like salmonella, campylobacter often sickens people through raw or undercooked poultry or eggs.

Those illnesses -- along with shigella, E. coli, listeria and others -- occurred at basically the same frequency as in the years 2004 through 2006, CDC officials said.

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