Why our food is making us sick

How bad is the problem?

Every year, 76 million Americans get sick from something they eat, says the federal Centers for Disease Control. More than 300,000 of these people are hospitalized, and 5,000 die. Many of those stricken don’t even realize they’re suffering from food poisoning, attributing their vomiting, fever, and other symptoms to the flu. Recent outbreaks have been both severe and widespread. Last month’s fatal outbreak led to the recall of 27 million pounds of tainted turkey and chicken—the largest recall in U.S. history.

Why is this happening?

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Bacteria from animal waste are entering the food supply, due to the sloppy practices of so-called factory farms. In the last 20 years, the U.S. meat industry has become concentrated in the hands of a few megafirms that now control most of our beef, hog, and chicken production. For maximum efficiency and profit, the companies wedge thousands of animals together in fetid, cramped “feedlots” that allow virtually no sunshine, fresh air, or natural movement. In these foul boxes and cages, animals live constantly amid their own waste. Years ago, when cattle roamed the range and chickens ran around farmyards, there was far less chance that one sick animal would infect a slew of others. In factory farms, however, diseases can spread like wildfire.

How does that occur?

Sometimes by contamination in the feedlots, but most often when the animals are slaughtered. Some factory farms kill and gut more than 91 chickens a minute and 390 cattle an hour. At that speed it’s almost impossible for processors to keep all the fecal matter that’s inside an animal and on its body from mixing with the meat. The excrement, laced with such powerful pathogens as E. coli 0157:H7, also fouls the knives and machinery that turn the creatures into everything from ground beef to lamb chops. Because the animals pass along the same production line, one tainted carcass can leave bacteria that infect thousands of others. Steaming, irradiating, and disinfecting the meat and keeping the machinery clean kills most of the bugs, but no system is foolproof. And ingesting as few as 10 E. coli 0157:H7 organisms can kill you.

Is meat the only culprit?

It’s the big one. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 70 percent of food-borne illnesses are now caused by meat. However, pathogens can also be found in fruits and vegetables. The 6 billion animals raised annually for food in this country produce about 1.4 billion tons of waste a year, and their foul runoff can spread to municipal water supplies and irrigation systems. Outbreaks of E. coli 0157:H7 have been traced to bean sprouts, cantaloupe, salad greens, and apple cider.

Can’t antibiotics help?

They’re part of the problem. For decades, it’s been standard practice to mix antibiotics with animal feed—not merely to prevent disease, but to make the animals grow faster. However, this relentless use of drugs has created bacteria known as “superbugs,” which resist these same antibiotics. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 237 of 407 chicken samples purchased at stores in four states were befouled with drug-resistant bacteria. These superbugs can prove especially dangerous to children, senior citizens, pregnant women, and others with weakened immune systems.

Isn’t the tainted meat inspected?

It is, in a rudimentary way. The USDA has just 7,600 inspectors to scrutinize all the meat produced in the U.S. They rely on touching and smelling meat to see if it is tainted. Unfortunately, pathogens like listeria, salmonella, and E. coli are tasteless, odorless, and invisible. Inspectors became even more ineffective when the USDA began allowing meatpackers to more than double their processing speeds. In 1995, David Carney, chairman of the union representing government food inspectors, declared that it had become “simply impossible to adequately inspect every animal.”

So what’s the government doing?

In 1996, after nearly 10 years of wrangling among federal agencies and the food industry, the Clinton administration introduced a replacement for the old “poke-and-sniff” method. The Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system is designed to search for pathogens in “hot spots” in the production process, where contamination is likely to occur. The law also gives the USDA the power to shut down plants that don’t meet minimum salmonella standards. The underlying assumption is that meat and poultry with high levels of salmonella, a common bacteria, may have other microbes as well. Supporters credit the new system with a 21 percent drop in reported cases of food poisoning between 1996 and 2001. But the system’s effectiveness was severely weakened last year when a U.S. Appeals Court ruled that the government could not shut down meat plants because they had repeatedly flunked the salmonella test.

So now what?

The Bush administration has taken the stand that it is primarily the food industry’s responsibility—not the government’s—to remove the pathogens from the meat it puts on America’s table. Garry McKee, the new head of the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service, recently told meatpacking executives, “Your system is broken, and it needs to be repaired.” The executives have yet to come forward with a plan.

The first meatpacking scandal

The Jungle,