I tell this friend about the latest salmonella outbreak, and she asks me, “Should I stop eating chicken?”
It’s a good question. In recent weeks, salmonella on chicken has officially sickened more than 300 people (the Centers for Disease Control says there are 25 illnesses for every one reported, so maybe 7,500) and hospitalized more than 40 percent of them, in part because antibiotics aren’t working. Industry’s reaction has been predictably disappointing: the chicken from the processors in question — Foster Farms — is still being shipped into the market. Regulators’ responses have been limited: the same chicken in question is still being sold.
Until the Food Safety and Inspection Service (F.S.I.S.) of the Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) can get its act together and start assuring us that chicken is safe, I’d be wary.
This is not a shutdown issue, but a “We care more about industry than we do about consumers” issue. Think that’s an exaggeration? Read this mission statement: “The Food Safety and Inspection Service is the public health agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for ensuring that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.” What part of “safe” am I misreading?
We should all steer clear at least of Foster Farms chicken, or any of the other brands produced in that company’s California plants, although they’re not all labeled such. Costco pulled nearly 9,000 rotisserie chickens from a store south of San Francisco last week, after finding contamination -- this is after cooking, mind you -- with a strain of salmonella Heidelberg, which is virulent, nasty and resistant to some commonly used antibiotics.
In sum: 1. There’s salmonella on chicken (some of which, by the way, is labeled “organic”). 2. It’s making many people sick, and some antibiotics aren’t working. 3. Production continues in the plants linked to the outbreak. 4. Despite warnings by many federal agencies (including itself!), the U.S.D.A. has done nothing to get these chickens out of the marketplace. 5. Even Costco can’t seem to make these chickens safe to eat. (...)
To its credit, Costco pulled the rotisserie chicken from its shelves, as did a couple of other retailers. (To its debit, Costco left raw Foster Farms chicken on the shelves, once again transferring the burden of safety to the consumer, even though the store must have known that it couldn’t guarantee that cooking the chicken would render it safe.) Foster Farms has not recalled a single piece of chicken, although it’s arguable that this same contamination has been going on for months. And F.S.I.S. officially has no power to do so.
The agency could, however, remove its inspectors from the three suspect plants, which would close them, and last week it threatened to do just that. Three days later, Foster Farms “submitted and implemented immediate substantive changes to their slaughter and processing to allow for continued operations.” What’s that mean? “We cannot tell you what their interventions are, because that’s a proprietary issue,” said Englejohn, adding that the interventions comprise “additional sanitary measures that reduce contamination.” Well, we hope so.
It’s a good question. In recent weeks, salmonella on chicken has officially sickened more than 300 people (the Centers for Disease Control says there are 25 illnesses for every one reported, so maybe 7,500) and hospitalized more than 40 percent of them, in part because antibiotics aren’t working. Industry’s reaction has been predictably disappointing: the chicken from the processors in question — Foster Farms — is still being shipped into the market. Regulators’ responses have been limited: the same chicken in question is still being sold.
Until the Food Safety and Inspection Service (F.S.I.S.) of the Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) can get its act together and start assuring us that chicken is safe, I’d be wary.This is not a shutdown issue, but a “We care more about industry than we do about consumers” issue. Think that’s an exaggeration? Read this mission statement: “The Food Safety and Inspection Service is the public health agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for ensuring that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.” What part of “safe” am I misreading?
We should all steer clear at least of Foster Farms chicken, or any of the other brands produced in that company’s California plants, although they’re not all labeled such. Costco pulled nearly 9,000 rotisserie chickens from a store south of San Francisco last week, after finding contamination -- this is after cooking, mind you -- with a strain of salmonella Heidelberg, which is virulent, nasty and resistant to some commonly used antibiotics.
In sum: 1. There’s salmonella on chicken (some of which, by the way, is labeled “organic”). 2. It’s making many people sick, and some antibiotics aren’t working. 3. Production continues in the plants linked to the outbreak. 4. Despite warnings by many federal agencies (including itself!), the U.S.D.A. has done nothing to get these chickens out of the marketplace. 5. Even Costco can’t seem to make these chickens safe to eat. (...)
To its credit, Costco pulled the rotisserie chicken from its shelves, as did a couple of other retailers. (To its debit, Costco left raw Foster Farms chicken on the shelves, once again transferring the burden of safety to the consumer, even though the store must have known that it couldn’t guarantee that cooking the chicken would render it safe.) Foster Farms has not recalled a single piece of chicken, although it’s arguable that this same contamination has been going on for months. And F.S.I.S. officially has no power to do so.
The agency could, however, remove its inspectors from the three suspect plants, which would close them, and last week it threatened to do just that. Three days later, Foster Farms “submitted and implemented immediate substantive changes to their slaughter and processing to allow for continued operations.” What’s that mean? “We cannot tell you what their interventions are, because that’s a proprietary issue,” said Englejohn, adding that the interventions comprise “additional sanitary measures that reduce contamination.” Well, we hope so.
by Mark Bittman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Paul Sakuma
