Chasing Outbreaks: How Safe Is Our Food? | Retro Report | The New York Times

A fast food nightmare may be getting worse

Hundreds of hospitalizations have been

traced to contaminated hamburgers.

Two children have died and

dozens are hospitalized.

It was one of the worst food poisoning

outbreaks in US history.

Contaminated meat at Jack In The Box

restaurants killed four children

and alerted the country to the hidden

dangers in our food.

"What do we want?"

"Green meat!"

Recalls of contaminated food in this

country have increased five-fold

Contaminated spinach, contaminated

cantaloupe, unpasteurized apple juice,

more than twenty years later

tens of millions of Americans

still get food poisoning each year.

"Just a couple of bites. That's all it

took." And some say progress hasn't been

fast enough. We need- I hate to say it,

but- bodies in the street before we get

it.

It was January 1993, and as Bill Clinton

was taking office, an unfolding public

health crisis was hitting the news.

Health officials on the West Coast

are bracing for more reports of food

poisoning linked to suspect hamburger meat

used by the Jack In The Box fast food

chain. At first it was 25. Within a

few more days, it was a 100. A 150.

And then 200. You know it was really like

the talk of the news every night

every station. Many of the critically ill

victims are children. The children have

been infected with a little known

and dangerous strain of bacteria called

E-Coli 0157, which lives in a cow's

intestines. Bill Marler would represent

many of them in lawsuits against

Jack In The Box. One little girl, her

liver had failed, her kidneys had failed,

she'd been in a coma, and I just remember

thinking to myself, "Oh my God. You know?

A hamburger?" As the news spread, some,

like Darin Detwiler, decided to avoid

hamburgers. "My family just put some

thoughts in terms of well-okay let's not

eat hamburgers. Definitely not eat at a

Jack in the Box." But Darin's son Riley

was infected anyway. By another child at

his daycare, who ate at the restaurant.

"We took him to the local hospital, and

he was seen, and he was tested. And he

got worse and worse and worse.

They put him under harms. I was holding

out for a, him to take a breath. I never

uh, never felt that." Riley died after

three weeks in a hospital and Detwiler

went on to become a food safety advocate.

Three other children also died in the

outbreak. "The public was shocked by what

ultimately we found out." Jack In The Box

didn't cook its hamburgers to a high

enough temperature to kill E-Coli

in violation of Washington state rules.

But the beef was contaminated before it

even reached the restaurant. Health

officials suspect the original source of

contamination was at the slaughter house.

Beef carcasses can become contaminated

with dangerous bacteria. Falling of the

production line into blood or feces on

the floor. Inside slaughter houses, USDA

inspectors were using the same techniques

they'd used for nearly a century to check

carcasses. The agriculture department

relies mainly on the poking and sniffing

by inspectors. We focused on what we

could see, what we could feel, what we

could smell. Unhappily, bacteria cannot

be detected by any of those methods.

Nobody was paying attention to E-Coli

0157. The beef industry thought of

bacteria as just a normal part of meat.

And that it's the consumer's

responsibility to cook it. The only point

of prevention currently documented

proven and available in the food chain

is the cooking process. Over the

objections of the beef industry,

the USDA, for the first time, set a zero

tolerance policy for E-Coli 0157 in raw

ground beef by declaring it an adulterant.

It means you cannot sell the product

if it's contaminated. And if it is

contaminated, you have to pull it off

the market. That made it like, you know,

sawdust and sausages. It can't be there.

The USDA would now test for E-Coli 0157.

And beef suppliers would be responsible

for getting rid of it. And Jack In The Box

? The company created the most intricate

inspection in the testing system in the

industry. It became a leader in reducing

contamination. Dr. David Atcherson was in

charge of food safety at the FDA. And now

advises food companies: "Jack In The Box

was a wake up call to many, including the

regulators. You going for hamburgers with

the kids, and you could die. It changed

consumers' perceptions, and it absolutely

changed behaviors of the industry."

E-Coli cases in beef eventually started to

decline. But by 2006: "...outbreak of

E-Coli is spreading rapidly..." "What we

started to learn was that this bug was

showing up in other places. People still

got sick. So where is it coming from?"

All across the country, grocery stores

are pulling bags of spinach off shelf as

the government raises to try to pinpoint

the source of the deadly contamination.

Investigators eventually traced the

E-Coli to pigs and cow droppings on a

ranch in California near where the spinach

was grown. "The growers didn't understand

the risks. It can run into the water

supply. It can be carried on birds. It

can be carried on equipment. It can be

picked up by other animals. Leaves get

harvested processed and put in a bag

then wind up in the consumers-

consumers' dinner table. This case is

calling into question how the entire food

supply is monitored. FDA virtually never

inspects farms. There were no requirements

in terms of controlling this type of risk

on a farm back in 2006. And that was part

of the problem. Atcherson says the USDA

learned after Jack In The Box weren't

fully appreciated by the agency that

regulates pro dibs, the FDA. In fact,

there were 15 different agencies

responsible for monitoring the food

supply with some confusing overlap.

Congress has been warned again and again

the food safety system was an

organisational mess. It took several more

years and several more outbreaks, in

everything from cheese to cookie dough

to get E-Coli 0157 more under control.

And while Congress eventually passed a law

giving the FDA more tools to fight

bacteria, four years later the law still

hasn't been fully funded or implemented.

The food safety system is dysfunctional.

It's slow to react to science, it's slow

to react to change. We need rules and

regulations in place that are going to

prevent the problems, not just react to

them. Today, food companies still have

much of the responsibility for food

safety. Case in point? Salmonella in

poultry. Salmonella has become a leading

cause of food poisoning. Unlike E-Coli,

the more dangerous strains of Salmonella

like Salmonella Heidleberg, have never

been declared adulterants. So all the USDA

can apply pressure. The decision to

recall foods is largely left with the

companies during an outbreak. Foster

Farms has not recalled any chicken. The

poultry company says its products are

safe to eat, it's properly handled, and

fully cooked. After the government linked

Foster Farms to an outbreak, it took

nearly a year of USDA investigation

before the company recalled any of its

chicken. More than 600 people were

sickened. Foster Farms declined an

on-camera interview. Marler, now a top

food safety lawyer, settled a lawsuit

against the company. There's a sense that

if it's not an adulterant, why do we need

to recall it? Even though there are

people stacking up like cord wood, being

sick. The USDA says court rulings make it

unlikely that Salmonella, which is more

common and typically less dangerous than

E-Coli, could ever be declared an

adulterant. But Marler says the agency

isn't learning from its own history. There

hasn't been the kind of attack on

Salmonella that there really could have

been, and that worked in my view really

well as a release to E-Coli 0157 in meat.

The thinking within the poultry industry

was that some level of Salmonella

was acceptable as long as the product was

properly handled, properly cooked, there

wouldn't be a problem. But following

industry practices didn't protect Cargill

in 2011, says its head of food safety.

Everything was produced under inspection,

and our programs were all running

according to plan. We saw periodic spikes

in Salmonella. We should have read

something into that. But at the time, we

didn't. We have late word tonight about

the latest nation wide Salmonella outbreak

It's made 78 people sick and 1 person

died. Unfortunately, it's only when this

really kinda hits you in the face that you

realize, "Hey, we have a problem here."

Cargill Foods has launched one of the

largest meat recalls in US history.

Cargill believes the outbreak may have

been exacerbated by an unusually high

concentration of Salmonella. But

concentration isn't something anyone

is required to measure. It could be one

cell in a sample. It could be a thousand

cells in a sample. They don't

differentiate. One cell isn't going to

make somebody sick. A thousand cells might

make somebody sick. Robach says the

company has now revamped its testing, and

now measures concentration. After their

outbreak, Foster Farms hired adjacent

consult on its new safety program. And

the USDA has added new procedures that

it says will result in thousands of fewer

cases in Salmonella each year. Regulators,

Congress make change from a regulatory

perspective when there's enough noise. It

historically has been a catastrophe to

strip that change. The industry, likewise

responds to catastrophes. Bill Marler says

a crisis by crisis response isn't enough

to prevent the next outbreak. You look

back on when changes happened. And

it's always after a disaster. It would be

great to figure out a way to make those

changes before that even happened.

And for an in-depth look at the current

threat from Salmonella, watch Front line.

What is the government doing to protect

us? We don't have laws that are

protecting us. The trouble with chicken-

a Front line investigation.