Every day in the United States, roughly 200,000 people are sickened by a food borne disease, 900 are hospitalized, and fourteen die. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than a quarter of the American population suffers a bout of food poisoning each year....Recent studies have found that many food borne pathogens can precipitate long-term ailments, such as heart disease, inflammatory bowel disease, neurological problems, autoimmune disorders, and kidney damage.
Although the rise in food borne illnesses has been caused by many complex factors, much of the increase can be attributed to recent changes in how American food is produced...
While medical researchers have gained important insights into the links between modern food processing and the spread of dangerous diseases, the nation's leading agribusiness firms have resolutely opposed any further regulation of their food safety practices.... Today the US government can demand the nationwide recall of defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals, and foam-rubber toy cows. But it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves....
A nationwide study published by the USDA in 1996 found that 7.5 percent of the ground beef samples taken at processing plants were contaminated with Salmonella, 11.7 percent were contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, 30 percent were contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus, and 53.3 percent were contaminated with Clostridium perfringens.... IN the USDA study 78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal material...
from Fast Food Nation by Eric Scholsser - pub 2002. pgs 195-197 (statistics may be slightly dated)
I don't think this is an issue of litigation. I think this may just be a symptom of a bigger problem. His premise makes a lot of sense to me: when you consolidate and centralize the food industries, it enables contaminants to spread. I'm sure it applies to tomatoes as well as meat (his argument is stated around the beef industry)
while i know that you can create a statistic to prove whatever point you want to make, and you do have to ignore his anti-republican rhetoric at times - it does seem to make logical sense that this has more to do with changes in centralized processing plants, centralized slaughter houses, centralized feed lots etc... than it does with someone being scared that Alex's mom might sue
(Nancy Donley's) six year old son, Alex, was infected with (e.coli O157:H7) in July of 1993 after eating a tainted hamburger. His illness been with abdominal cramps...it progressed to diarrhea that filled a hospital toilet with blood. Doctors frantically tried to save Alex's life, drilling holes in his skull to relieve pressure, inserting tubes in his chest to keep him breathing, as the Shiga toxins destroyed internal organs... He became ill on a Tuesday night... and was dead by Sunday afternoon. Toward the end, Alex suffered hallucinations and dementia, no longer recognizing his mother or father. Portions of his brain had been liquefied. pg. 200
we are climbers. we deal with risk every day. is that really an acceptable risk for you to take with your child?
"Unthinkably good things can happen, even late in the game." ~ Under the Tuscan Sun
But I could still picture this scenario:
