Food poisoning: it’s what’s for dinner
Tomatoes, spinach, peppers, processed meat, cheese, hamburger, peanuts…sounds like a fairly average shopping list, right? At various points over the past few years, however, each of these foods has been sold with a heaping secret helping of salmonella, listeriosis, or e. coli. Thousands of people have been made sick by these contaminated foods, dozens have died, and many innocent food growers, producers, and processors have been caught in the economic fallout caused by the outbreaks.
The latest exciting poisoned food saga involves peanuts contaminated with salmonella (677 made ill, 9 dead). A peanut processing plant in Georgia linked to the outbreak was found to have dead rats and cockroaches infesting the facility, not to mention big holes in the roof right above piles of peanuts waiting for processing (fyi: salmonella just loooves it damp). Another Peanut Corporation of America plant in Texas was later shut down after a crawlspace was found to contain dead rodents, rodent excrement and bird feathers and that particles from these delightful items were being sucked through the building’s ventilation system. The kicker? Well, there’s at least three kickers:
- PCA’s in-house inspectors knew that their peanut butter contained salmonella and yet knowingly went ahead and shipped tainted products on at least a dozen occasions since 2007–at the repeated urging of CEO Stewart Parnell.
- The PCA was certified organic and its certification was completely up-to-date. I guess rats (and rat feces) are, technically, ‘organic’…
- One of the PCA’s major customers, Kellogg, hired private food safety inspectors who had no experience inspecting peanut processing facilities and who were given insufficient access by plant managers to do their job. Oh, and they weren’t required to test for salmonella. So they didn’t.
One of the most horrible aspects of serious food-illness outbreaks is that so many people are made sick and die before the cause of the infection can even be found (overwhelmingly, children, the elderly, pregnant women, and those with compromised immune systems are those who fall victim first). This is due in large part to the incredible complexity of the modern industrial food production, processing, and distribution system, which means that contaminated food outbreaks are no longer limited to a single company or product, or even to the same area of the world (as the melamine-tainted Chinese milk scandal proved).
You’ll remember how meat products from that one Maple Leaf plant in Ontario quickly found their way into dozens of different stores and food outlets, killing unsuspecting people across the entire country last summer. As another example, the Peanut Corporation of America provided peanut products for about 85 different companies who used them in their own processed food products. So although most people would be wary of peanut butter, it might not occur to them to be concerned about energy bars, crackers, or ice cream cones. None of these products come with a huge Peanut Corporation of America logo (or skull and crossbones) on them, so we have to rely on the food recall updates provided by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to find out what we should be avoiding.
Sad to say, it’s important to diligently keep abreast of these alerts in order to protect yourself and your family. An easy way to keep on top of the latest information is to sign up to receive email notification of food product recalls relevant to Canadian consumers straight from the CFIA, and check out the food safety resources below. It’s also vital to ask questions about where your food is coming from and find out how it is produced. Too often, the consumer is expected to bear the majority of the burden of preventing food-borne illness (don’t mix up your cutting boards! never undercook your turkey!), while unscrupulous growers, producers, and processors are left free to play Russian roulette with our health by selling us their dirty and dangerous food.
Food safety resources
- CFIA’s consumer centre Food illness fact sheets, up-to-the-minute information on food recalls and allergy alerts
- Barf Blog Dr Doug Powell bluntly dishes the dirt on all things related to food safety
- Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education Advice and information to help Canadian consumers improve food handling practices
- Food Safety First A political action site sponsored by Canada’s food inspectors, urging greater government investment in food safety
- Health Canada’s food safety resources (many the same as on the CFIA site)
- Provincial restaurant inspection contacts Alarmed by a dirty restaurant? Find out who to contact about it here.
