In the United States over the period 1940-82, in which time it is estimated that 30 billion units of low-acid canned food were produced annually (and of these approximately one billion per year were canned seafoods), there have been two out breaks (involving four cases and two deaths) of human botulism attributable to delivery of inadequate thermal processes in commercially canned food in metal containers. This corresponds to a rate of botulism outbreaks due to failure in the selection or delivery of the thermal process schedule of under 1 in l012 (0.6/l012 ).