How Safe is Your Food? 

VIDEO

Most Americans are aware that raw chicken, meat and eggs can be contaminated with 

bacteria that can make us sick. And most of us go to efficient lengths at home to protect ourselves 

from food-related threats -- we practice proper refrigeration, we scrub our cutting boards, we wash 

our fruits and vegetables, and we avoid raw hamburger meat. So it can be quite disturbing when 

food-related disease outbreaks make headlines, as was the case with produce, in particular, toward 

the end of 2006.  

 

You may recall that Taco Bell had an outbreak of E. coli -- which was eventually linked back to 

bagged lettuce – that sickened more than 150 customers in the Midwest and on the East Coast in 

November and December. And this outbreak occurred just months after contaminated bagged 

spinach killed three people and sickened 200 across 26 states.1 

 

If those unrelated incidents made you uncomfortable about the food you were buying at the 

grocery store, consider these statistics: Overall for 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and 

Prevention estimates that food-borne microbes made approximately 76 million Americans sick, sent 

more than 300,000 to the hospital, and killed approximately 5,000.2 These numbers include people 

who were affected by bacteria and viruses hidden not only in produce, but also growing on our meat 

and floating in our dairy products, grains and beverages. 

 

In such an advanced, regulated and high-tech society as ours, how could this kind of thing 

possibly happen?    

 

The answer is that no matter how many protections we put in place -- food is vulnerable to 

contamination. Basically, the more that food is handled, cut or broken in processing, the more 

opportunity there is for contaminants to be introduced and for natural skin barriers that resist 

contamination to be destroyed. As our society eats more and more prepared and pre-packaged 

foods, we increase our risk of exposure to bacteria.  

 

While many kinds of pre-packaged foods are culprits for contamination, it’s only been recently 

that the packaged produce industry has become a greater contributor to the problem.  Packaged 

produce took off in the late 90s, and fresh-cut salad sales tripled between 1997 and 2006.1  

 

Over the past few years, diseases linked to produce have been on the rise, and mass 

processing and distribution is taking most of the blame. According to Dr. Christopher Braden from the 

CDC, “The way produce is farmed and processed has changed. It’s become more centralized, and 

you have these huge processors and distributors that produce tens of thousands of pounds of a 

particular produce in a particular day. If something goes wrong with that produce, you’ve got a big 

problem.”3 

 

 

Basically, lettuce can become contaminated in several ways, including unsanitary irrigation or 

exposure to flood waters, or when animals carrying bacteria, usually E. coli, wander onto farmland. 

Once a single head of lettuce is contaminated, even though processing plants wash leafy greens 

three times in chlorinated water, it can affect multiple bags and an outbreak occurs.3 

 

What’s to be done? While most experts agree that it is not possible in an age of industrialized 

farming to totally prevent food contamination, most believe that beefing up oversight could certainly 

help. Currently in the United States, management of food safety is a shared affair. The Agriculture 

Department regulates meat, poultry and egg products. The FDA provides oversight for produce, 

seafood, and everything else. Agriculture has twice the budget of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety 

and Applied Nutrition, in spite of the fact that the FDA oversees 80% of the nation’s food products 

compared to Agriculture’s 20%. As for inspectors, the Agriculture Department has 7,700, some four 

times the number in the FDA.4  

 

Traditionally, the FDA has relied on voluntary guidelines such as its 1998 “Guide to Minimize 

Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruit and Vegetables.”  But now, nearly a decade later, the 

group’s own leaders acknowledge the need for new guidelines that cover mass processing and 

packaging, as well as corporate mega-farm production. Our large-scale production and processing 

systems exacerbate breaks in the safety system because contaminated food can mistakenly be 

distributed coast to coast literally overnight.4  

 

As Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer for the FDA food safety division says, “I think it’s 

fairly clear that something needs to change.”4   

 

Indeed, something needs to change. Bacteria clearly seem to have the upper hand on us right 

now. E. coli 0157:H7, which comes from cow feces, is one of the worst offenders. It sickened 73,000 

in 2006 and killed 61. This strain first gained steam in 1982, around the same time that cow feed 

shifted from hay to grains. It’s harmless to cows, but it takes only a small amount to make a human 

sick, and once it has contaminated a crop, it’s nearly impossible to wash off.3 

 

With hundreds of thousands of facilities handling our produce, it’s going to take a multi-faceted 

approach to see change and improvements to food safety. Increasing the number of FDA inspectors 

could help in the short term, but implementing new guidelines and regulations should be the next 

step. Along these lines, experts have made several recommendations. In terms of preventing 

contamination, they say it’s important to monitor the proximity between cows and fields where 

produce is growing. Other approaches, which address the problem after contamination has already 

occurred, include heat treatment, pasteurization, and use of irradiation. It’s also important for farmers 

themselves to get involved – they have a vested interest in contributing to the solution. Without self- 

regulation, they could easily lose their market.3 

 

And lastly, until the overall problem is solved, we as consumers must continue to do our part. 

Avoid raw produce and meat, cook foods thoroughly, cleanse all cooking surfaces well, and choose 

restaurants with care. 

 

When it comes to food safety, there’s no such thing as being too careful. 

 

For Health Politics, I’m Mike Magee. 

 

 

References 

 

1. Engel M, Lin RG. Processing may spread E. coli. Los Angeles Times. January 20, 2007. 

2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Food Related Illness and Death in the United 

States.” Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no5/mead.htm. 

3. Grady D. When bad things come from ‘good’ food. The New York Times. January 2, 2007. F1. 

4. Martin A. Stronger rules on produce likely after outbreaks of E. coli. The New York Times. 

December 11, 2006.