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POISONED: The True Story of the Deadly E. Coli Outbreak That Changed the Way Americans Eat  By Jeff Benedict. Inspire Books. 301 pages. $24.95

Reviewed by Nona Nelson
nona.nelson@roanoke.com

Hamburgers. A mainstay in American cuisine, a favorite at summer cookouts and the star of most fast-food chain menus.
No matter what temperature most beef lovers prefer their steaks cooked, very few would take the risk of consuming a hamburger at less than medium well — the risk of severe or even deadly food poisoning is just too great.

This was the food safety lesson learned the hard way in the early 1990s when four children died and hundreds of others were sickened after eating undercooked burgers sold at Jack in the Box fast food restaurants.

Jeff Benedict, journalist and professor at Southern Virginia University, recounts the outbreak that made consumers aware of E. coli O157:H7, a strain of bacteria that can grow in the intestines of cattle and cause a range of nasty symptoms — some deadly — in humans.

On Christmas Eve 1992, 6-year-old Lauren Rudolph of San Diego was hospitalized  with severe stomach pain and bloody diarrhea. The once healthy little girl slipped into a coma from which she never awakened. The autopsy determined the cause of death to be hemolytic-uremic syndrome, most likely caused by E. coli she ingested.

Days later, Brianne Kiner, 9, was admitted to a Seattle-area hospital with the same symptoms. She did eventually emerge from her coma,  and she survived the severe damage the pathogen wreaked on her body, though she needed years of physical therapy to recover. Even 18 years later, Kiner still suffers from chronic illnesses.

The outbreak was quickly traced back to Jack in the Box restaurants, where tests found dangerous levels of E. coli were present in meat obtained from two suppliers.

The California-based company, while following federal regulations for cooking frozen patties to an internal temperature of 140 degrees, failed to comply with a new Washington state health department regulation to cook ground beef to an internal temperature of 155 degrees. The higher temperature would have killed the bacteria.

Culpable in the deaths and devastating illnesses of hundreds of children, Jack in the Box executives scrambled to correct food safety procedures, perform damage control to the company’s reputation and save it from bankruptcy.
Then, of course, came the lawyers.
Through research and interviews, Benedict weaves these complex stories together in a straightforward, fast-paced narrative that adds dignity and dimension to the people involved. He makes the science of E. coli and the way it can devastate a vulnerable host easy to comprehend.
He paints a vivid picture of the intense suffering of these children and the stress on their families.

He also gives balanced treatment to the fast-food chain’s executives — men who could easily be vilified for the oversights that led to the tragedy — for their goal to set new industry standards for safety, to keep their company from shutting down in a storm of bad publicity, and for what seemed to be a genuine desire to help the families they inadvertently hurt, no matter how high the cost.

Benedict also touches on the ways the potentially deadly bacteria entered the food supply and how this outbreak, unlike others that preceded it, ended up improving standards for food handling in restaurants and processing plants.

The flaw in this book is that Benedict concentrates much of the story on Bill Marler, the attorney who initiated the class action suit against Jack in the Box and its parent company, Foodmaker. Marler represented Brianne Kiner and two other children in individual suits and negotiated multimillion-dollar settlements with Foodmaker’s insurance companies.

Perhaps the fact that Benedict holds a law degree made him hang the hero star on Marler instead of the mothers of the afflicted children or Dave Theno, the consultant hired by Jack in the Box to revamp its safety protocols. That’s not to downplay Marler’s efforts on behalf of his clients. He helped provide security as they faced a lifetime of extraordinary medical expense, and he has since become the leading legal authority on food contamination and advocate for food safety.

But by dwelling on Marler, especially his decision to leave his law firm in the middle of the class action litigation, the book becomes tedious and reads like a less-entertaining version of a John Grisham novel.

The pages spent on the legal machinations, especially when lawyers start threatening to sue other lawyers over the yet-to-be-earned fees, does little to make the profession look noble and detracts from what the subtitle promises — the story of how this incident changed the way the country eats.

The book also leaves many unanswered questions about prior outbreaks, the  meat suppliers’ liability and the role factory farming plays in food-borne illness today. Maybe those lawyers declined to be interviewed.

Still, “Poisoned” is a good reminder to be careful about the food we consume. After reading it, you likely won’t hesitate to leave that burger on the grill for just a few more minutes.