The stainless counters, sinks, appliances, etc. in a typical restaurant kitchen spent plenty of time being wire brushes when they were fabricated and approximately none of the bristles shed during that process ever made it into anyone's food because those surfaces were cleaned of debris before being used. Wire brushes and stainless steel scrub pads are incredibly common in food-service. Steel scrapers are commonly used on aluminum sheet pans all the time. Green srub pads shed fibers. The "dirty" side of a kitchen is chock full of debris you don't want to eat You don't wind up with this debris in food because the things being cleaned are cleaned properly.
Scrubbing just breaks off stuff that's caked on. It doesn't remove them except for the few removed by gravity. Dirt, metal and burnt food particles all need to be removed from the thing they're on. This is done by washing and rinsing. The water doesn't know or care whether it's washing away burnt food or wire bristles that were left there while breaking loose the burnt food. If things are being done properly it all goes down the drain. Simply brushing your grill and nothing else is not an adequate cleaning job. You wouldn't just scrape off a pan and then use it without washing and rinsing it.
The stuff in a commercial kitchen is (for the most part) designed to be quick and easy to clean properly. Most appliances and surfaces are wash down capable. Anything that's loose can be gotten off of them with a properly directed stream of water. Corners and crevices that are hard to clean are kept to a minimum. Designing things so that an overworked food-service worker can still clean them well enough helps a lot.
This isn't a wire brush problem. This is a people too lazy to clean things problem that's aggravated by the fact that the contents of the average consumer kitchen were not designed to quickly and easily cleanable and the average consumer will not be fired if they habitually fail to clean things properly.
I do not understand why some people think adding legislation to that will solve the problem of people who do not clean things properly.
This subject is a big deal is because many people clean their grill by brushing and brushing only, steel wire is not something you expect in your food.
Regarding the article itself, on one hand I expect medical professionals (who also work in an environment where being able to clean things is important) have a more nuanced opinion than "just don't use wire brushes" On the other hand, the kind of cleaning that goes on in a medical environment is different and all the stereotype of surgeons expecting the world to revolve around them.
Edit: meant to reply to parent.