Front Burner: Is our food safe?
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BUENA VISTA – Bill Marler, the most prominent food-poisoning attorney in the country, had been scheduled to speak at Southern Virginia University in Buena Vista for some time.
It was a coincidence that his visit fell on Oct. 7, in the middle of the worst food-borne illness outbreak the United States has seen in 25 years. But if you’ll pardon my pessimism, I’d be surprised if the man could find an outbreak-free window at any time.
Lately, listeria-contaminated cantaloupe has sickened 116 people and killed 23 – mostly folks over the age of 60 who probably felt good about having fresh fruit in their diets. I mean, it isn’t as if they were eating an undercooked hamburger or raw cookie dough.
But lately, that doesn’t seem to matter. In the past 10 years, people have died or gotten sick after eating seemingly innocuous foods such as green onions, tomatoes, papayas, fresh spinach and nuts. The Food and Drug Administration has gone so far as to say it isn’t even worth the risk anymore to eat raw sprouts, which have caused outbreaks every year in the U.S. since at least 1995.
That, my friends, really is nuts.
Continue reading this column-slash-rant here.
How does the latest foodborne illness outbreak make you feel? Have these outbreaks changed the way YOU eat?
October 19, 2011 - 8:57 AM
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The main way the vegetable scares have changed my diet is by making me *less* scared of rare meats. What’s the point of suffering through a shoe-leather steak or a hockey-puck burger when the veggies that come with it are just as likely to kill you?
Today’s MSNBC.com’s news tells of more cantalope cases. This has been going on since August. Cantalopes do not last that long, so the source must be more than the one farm the FDA identified. Kin of scary. By the way, very good article.
Good point, Mark!
David, thank you. I believe the reason these cases continue to emerge is because listeria has a long incubation period. You can fall ill anywhere from a few days to 70 days after eating the tainted food.