Personal Pleas For Food Safety, Will The Calls Be Heeded This Time?

It’s been 16 years since the Jack-In-The-Box E. coli in 1993, where hundreds were injured and four children died after eating undercooked hamburgers from the chain.  Court documents later showed that the “fast-food chain knew about but disregarded Washington state laws that would have prevented the deadly 1993 outbreak of E. coli food poisoning” (link).  9-year old Brianne Kiner survived her ordeal with hemolytic uremic syndrome after being a coma for three weeks, but was left with brain damage, asthma, and diabetes.

In 2001 Barbara Kowalcyk’s 2-year old son, Kevin, died after contracting E. coli O157:H7 from a hamburger. Her son’s death thrust her into a life of food-safety activism.  She started the non-profit Center for Foodborne Illness and continues to lobby Congress for an improved food safety system.  She has tried in vain for many years to get “Kevin’s Law” passed, which would give the FDA the authority to shut down plants that repeatedly produce pathogen contaminated foods. She recently talked with Evan Kleiman, host of KCRW’s Good Food, about her struggles with food safety advocacy.

Within the last month, The New York Times and The Washington Post showcased two more cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome caused by E. coli contaminated foodstuff – Stephanie Smith suffered after eating hamburger, and the other has been hospitalized since May after eating contaminated  Nestle cookie dough.

marler times

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

Stephanie Smith, 22, had been a children’s dance instructor, but will never walk again, let alone dance.   US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has heard the emotional pleas for better food safety regulation and efficient enforcement and has pledged to enhance food safety.  But, food safety experts think he’s not doing enough, fast enough.  Even some from Congress are frustrated with the lack of accountability;  After reading the NY Times article, Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn), a longtime champion of food safety, wrote an open letter to Vilsack demanding an investigation into tainted beef and asking larger slaughterhouses to demonstrate responsibility and accountability.  During the House campaign to pass HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, she noted in her debates that when over 3,000 Americans were killed on 9/11, America went to war immediately.  Yet, 5,000 Americans die annually from food poisoning and still we do nothing to enhance the safety of our food system.

Apparently,we can only leap to action when culpability lies elsewhere…

Or do they all have to die at the same time to get Congress to notice?

This, of course, is asinine and unacceptable.  Concerned Americans want action, and they want it before Thanksgiving:

Put-me-out-of-business-big-box-Web

A bipartisan collection of Senators got visits from food poisoning victims–or their surviving family members–[October 7th] , as part of preeminent food poisoning attorney Bill Marler’s campaign to get meaningful food safety legislation passed in the Senate before Thanksgiving. During their visits, the food safety advocates passed out the packages in the photo, above, which contained a T-shirt with Marler’s Put a Trial Lawyer Out of Business logo, as well as an info sheet about what meaningful legislation actually means. Currently, there are four different food safety Bills under consideration by the Senate, in various stages of hearing and mark up. Any meaningful legislation that gets enacted should include mandatory recall powers for FDA, mandated inspections and testing on a regular basis for food producers, and major changes in what USDA considers acceptable pathogens in meat that’s allowed in the food chain.

Obama Foodorama

Think we should wait until Thanksgiving to have safe food?  After the article in the New York Times, a ton of people wrote in expressing their concerns for food safety.  Now, it’s your turn to write.  Find your representatives online on the House site and the Senate website.  Tell them you want to give thanks for not having to worry about whether you’ll end up spending the holiday season in the hospital.

October 12, 2009  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Politics

2 Responses

  1. Carol L. Tucker-Foreman - October 12, 2009

    Tonight at 9pm EDT Barbara Kowalcyk and her mother Pat Buck will be interviewed on Larry King Live on CNN. See http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/
    Barb and Pat have devoted thousands of hours traveling to Washington to tell government officials why it is vital to change food safety laws. They were in Washington last week urging support for the FDA reform bill now before the Senate. They have also urged Congress to modernize the meat and poultry inspection laws which are administered by the USDA. Tune into Larry King and see how a mother and grandmother are working to spare others the tragedy they suffered.

  2. Peanut Butter Crisis A Year On | Food Bubbles - February 7, 2010

    [...] Major changes in food inspections methodology were called for nationwide.  Yet, food-born illnesses continue to grab headlines. [...]

Leave a Reply