Posted on 02/03/2016 3:00:03 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
In the aftermath of an E. coli outbreak at Chipotle that sickened dozens of people across the United States last fall and led to an overhaul of the company's food safety practices, Americans reacted by avoiding the beloved fast-food chain. Restaurants that once sported long lines were suddenly empty, a phenomenon that was almost surely happening nationwide.
The risks, in other words, were simply too great in people's minds for them to continue frequenting the Mexican-inspired favorite, because Chipotle had a food safety problem.
But the outrage was at least partly misplaced, according to Bill Marler, a lawyer specializing in food-borne illness. The outbreak, he says, was less of an anomaly specific to the chain than a symptom of the American food system, which isn't as safe as it could be and really should be.
Marler, who has been involved in many high-profile outbreaks over the past 30 years, including the 1993 E. coli outbreak at Jack in the Box, which killed several children and forced the government to impose zero tolerance for the presence of the pathogen in food, says that problems such as the one at Chipotle are far more common than most people realize. ~snip~ In 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, more than 8,000 food products were recalled by the Food and Drug Administration, and nearly 100 were recalled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The problem touches organic foods, too.
~snip~
In a recent piece, published in Bottom Line Health, he lists six foods he no longer eats, because he believes the risk of eating them is simply too large. The list includes raw oysters and other raw shellfish, raw or under-cooked eggs, meat that isn't well-done, unpasteurized milk and juice, and raw sprouts.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I agree with the list. Have been avoiding them for years, especially sprouts!
But he’ll get into a car and drive, where the risks are probably much worse.
We all make our own risk/reward decisions, but give your brain too much focus on a specific risk and you’ll have a very clear aversion to it. That’s a protective response in our biology.
I always eat rare steak. If I die from eating steak, I would say I had a good life. Also, I prefer eggs with runny yolks. Life is too short to worry about this stuff.
MMMMMMMM.....rare steak, oysters on the half shell, eggs over easy........
I have been eating raw oysters, sashimi, sunnyside up eggs and rare steaks my entire life, raw milk as a kid growing up and have never gotten sick from any of it.
No one can take me from my raw oyster “shooters.” No one.
Only eating well-done meat seems a bit too general. Ground meat, maybe, but only well-done steaks? That just seems silly.
You are so right.
Now, fugu should be avoided. I do. I’m still alive.
Ditto
Yep.
My brain is muddled. I thought the JITB E-Coli was in the mid early to late 80’s. Not 1993.
I’ll eat rare steak and eggs easy-over. But I absolutely avoid the rest of that stuff. I used to like sprouts, until I realized that I got sick every time I ate them.
Food safety is a huge concern to the scientific committee. Every American Society for Microbiology meeting that I have attended devotes a lot of time to that problem. Going to one of those meetings is a real hair-raising experience. Our delivery system in the US is second-to-none, with the ability to deliver foods to stores anywhere in the country within a day or so. What this means is that a tainted food can be on the store shelves in 18 states before food testing catches up to the fact that it is tainted.
There is a tough balance, here. Fresh fruits and vegetables are considered a necessary component of a healthy diet. However, uncooked foods are the likeliest source of pathogens. Trying to come up with a better way to ensure food safety is a real challenge for the scientific community (and, by extension, the regulatory agencies who depend on the scientific advice to make decisions).
Many of our foods could and should be irradiated, but the anti-nuclear activists would wet their pants. Here as elsewhere, the luddites are killing people. If I saw an irradiated and a non-irradiated pack of hamburger side by side on the supermarket shelf, I would buy the irradiated one.
I love raw oysters followed by a medium rare filet mignon, all washed down by a nice red wine. Let’s not get carried away with these food scares.
Except for the unpasteurized milk, I eat them all. However, I also either catch (oysters & clams) or produce (eggs from my hens, sprouts, oranges for juice) my own. Haven't figured out a way to raise beef yet on my small property so I still rely on the store for that. Add to that, I only buy raised or grown in the USA. We never buy food from Mexico, China (or Asian countries) or for that matter any third world country.
ahhh Ring Dings. Loved them as a kid. Don’t think I’ve had one in over 30yrs.
Chipotle hires many bad workers who are either underhanded or don’t know what they are doing.
LOL these aren’t food.no problem.
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