I spent most of the week in the “other Washington.” It all does make you wonder, as one Congressman quipped some time ago: “Who needs Al-Qaeda when you have got E. coli?” What would happen if we stopped the petty bickering and actually did something about food safety like:
Growers:
1. Develop and implement Hazard
Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 10:00 a.m.
2322 Rayburn House Office Building
WRITTEN TESTIMONY BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
Chairman and members of the committee, my name is William Marler. I am a trial lawyer. My law firm Marler Clark, located in Seattle, Washington, specializes in representing victims of foodborne illness.
Unfortunately, for my clients, I have been in business too long. It began in 1993 with over 700 people sickened, hundreds hospitalized – many with life-long complications – and four deaths – stemming from the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak.
I thank you for the honor of being allowed to testify before this committee. I am proud of the work that this committee has done to try to improve food safety throughout the U.S. This will be my first time testifying before the U.S. Congress. Although I have never had the honor to testify, I was there in 1994 for Senate hearings about the lack of safety in our food supply. I was with Brianne Kiner, then a nine year old girl, who spent six months hospitalized, suffered acute kidney failure and multiple strokes, had her large intestine removed, was in a coma for over a month, and spent 100 days on dialysis, all from eating a hamburger. Thirteen years later, I was here again, this time with Ashley and Isabella Armstrong – victims of the more recent Dole Spinach E. coli outbreak that sickened 205, killing 5; with Sean Pruden – a victim of an E. coli outbreak at Taco Bell that sickened nearly 100; and with Terri Marshal, whose mother-in-law has remained in a nursing home since December 2006 after eating a few spoonfuls of Salmonella-tainted peanut butter.Continue Reading It’s Friday night and I am watching Stephen Colbert on C-SPAN testify on immigration and it made me think about my testimony from 2008 before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on food safety
I must admit that I have never voted for a Republican since I was frist able to vote in 1976. Watching Senator Coburn on CSpan last night confirmed for me that I need to stop voting Democratic (and raising and donating money) because the Republicans really care about me and my bank account. Thank you
This may well pop up in a few ads in D.C. this next week.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved legislation fast-tracked by chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to strengthen criminal penalties for food safety violators, in addition to a list of seven federal judicial nominees, some of whom have faced long delays in the Senate. Committee members unanimously cleared S. 3767, the Food Safety Accountability Act, which
Right up until the time of her death, June Dunning remained an active, self-aware, and outgoing woman. Her health had always been good. For the last seven years of her life, she lived in Hagerstown, Maryland with her daughter and son-in-law. On August 28, 2006, June consumed a small amount of Dole baby spinach from a bag her daughter had purchased at the local grocery store days earlier. The source of part of that spinach was a small, organic farm in California that had sold its spinach, not to customers directly, not to a local restaurant, grocery store or farmer’s market, but to a broker for further processing. The bag of spinach later tested positive for a pathogenic strain of non-O157:H7 E. coli.
E. coli Victim: June Dunning from Marlerclark on Vimeo.
Continue Reading June Dunning, another reason to pass S. 510 and deem certain E. coli’s adulterants
Abott Laboratories Incl. is voluntarily recalling one of its baby powder products. It is the Similac baby formula. According to the company,
Similac baby formula may contain beetle larvae and some tiny insect parts in certain lot numbers because in one of their manufacturing facilities, beetles were found. The batch of products suspected to be
The egg hearing today was disturbing on many levels. The petty bickering between the Democrats and Republicans, although expected, was childlike. The anti-chicken protesters were entertaining, but besides the point. Probably the most disturbing were the faux apologies by the mass egg producers who tried to portray themselves as poor farmers that simply grew too
Good Morning. Thank you Chairman Stupak, Ranking Member Burgess, Chairman Waxman, and Committee members. I am honored to be here today to speak to you about my experience with the Salmonella poisoning that I got from the recent Wright Co. and Hillandale Farms Egg Recall.
My name is Sarah Lewis, I am 30 years old and I am a mom a wife and a proud Daughter of a small business owner that abides by all of our state and local regulations. I have two beautiful girls – Hailey 7 and Kyndall 4 – and I have wonderful husband who served our country proudly as a marine: Chris Lewis.
Not only did this experience affect me – it has affected my whole family! My sister Stacey also got salmonella poisoning from the eggs. The night we ate the custard tart was at my sister’s college graduation banquet. My whole family was there – my husband and kids, my mom and dad, my grandma, my aunt, my sister and her boyfriend. We were all there celebrating this amazing achievement for my sister, not even suspecting that that night would change our lives for a very long time! My sister and I look back at that night and say – what if our grandma or one of my daughters had eaten the tarts we received? They probably would have died. Knowing how sick we were scares the heck out of us now.Continue Reading Sarah Lewis: Testimony for the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce United States House of Representatives Salmonella Outbreak
Phil Brasher, Dean of Ag writers and Willy Neuman of the New York Times could not have written stories as well timed as the ones that dropped into my inbox just as I was landing in D.C. from Seattle, via Wichita and Atlanta to attend tomorrow afternoons hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Investigations (third or forth I have attended).
Mr. Brasher wrote, “Testimony: DeCosters to apologize for egg outbreak.” Apparently Mr. Brasher got a pre-release of the DeCosters’ testimony where he is going to “apologize … to victims of a salmonella outbreak and pledge not to resume selling fresh eggs until their farms are free from disease, …” He will go on: “While we always believed we were doing the right thing, it is now very clear that we must do more,” said Peter DeCoster, who is chief operating officer of the Wright County Egg operations, which his father owns.”
However, please do not forget that “[t]he Food and Drug Administration found numerous unsanitary conditions on the farms, including the presence of mice, a leading source of salmonella in egg farms, and numerous entry points for rodents. Records showed that the DeCoster egg farms tested positive 73 times in two years for the bacteria strain linked to the illnesses.”
But even if an apology for sickening some 1,600 and causing the recall of 550,000,0000 eggs had any meaning, Mr. Neuman’s story, “An Egg Farmer and a History of Salmonella,” renders a DeCoster apology meaningless. As Mr. Neuman catalogues:Continue Reading When is an apology chicken shit?
