By Judith Fales

In 1993, children in Seattle became sick, and some died, from an E. coli outbreak. Jack in the Box, an American fast-food chain, had sold tainted and undercooked meat. Another E. coli outbreak was found in spinach in 2008, and in 2009, people became sick from eating peanuts and peanut butter. A whistleblower working in the peanut industry reported rats in some factories, but was told to “shut up.” Despite having recall insurance, the company initially refused to recall its products. Subsequently, 3,000 products were recalled, and the head of the company was sentenced to prison. Consumers also became sick after consuming eggs distributed by two farms in Iowa in 2016. In 2018 many became sick after eating romaine lettuce (one of the highest-risk foods) from farms in Arizona and California.

In the past two months, the FDA has issued recalls and alerts for various juices and other beverages, alfalfa and onion sprouts, dark chocolate filled mini waffle cones (which I recently purchased), trail mix, beef and chicken dog foods, Lactaid milk, fudge brownies, whole cantaloupes, eggs, popsicles, and more.

Health problems stemming from food in the U.S. were discussed in the 2023 documentary, Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food, highlighting significant flaws in our food industry. Despite many claims of the U.S. having the safest food system in the world, we are actually significantly deficient in this area. While many countries in Europe have food packaging that states its contents are “pathogen free,” our country does not.

Why do we experience these problems that cause sickness and death? A primary cause is the way cows and chickens are raised and slaughtered. Most live in such crowded conditions that animals with infections easily spread it to the rest. Animal waste also seeps into channels holding water where nearby farmers water their crops, resulting in E. coli and salmonella getting onto the leafy greens and vegetables we eat.

No single agency oversees our food industry. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, local health departments, food producers, and growers all have some responsibility. Producers of leafy greens basically self-regulate, but farms are off-limits to regulators. Some lack of regulation is due to lobbyists who work for the food growers and processers who fight government regulation, and who are more powerful than consumers.

What can we do? As consumers, we must become as educated as possible and make choices about risks that we are willing to take. While one steak comes from one cow, chopped meat comes from many cows, increasing the risk that some of those cows may have been sick. We also need to learn what foods are most likely to make us sick, and decide for ourselves if we will continue to buy and eat those products.

Learn more by watching Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food on Netflix, in which filmmaker Stephanie Soechtig examines and investigates how systemic failures in the food industry in the U.S. can cause outbreaks of foodborne pathogens with deadly consequences.