Bacteria is taking over the food pyramid

Today we're getting into something I know you and I can't go without food. All summer we've been getting messages that some of our food is unsafe from outbreaks. Food recalls have sickened thousands of people this year to ensuing recalls of affected foods from iceberg lettuce and eggs to jalapeno peppers and even baby formula. This morning some of the nation's biggest grocery stores racing to pull products with jalapenos off their shelves as the FDA warns of a salmonella outbreak. There's even concern over the safety of many additives used in our food and people in all 50 states have been impacted by our compromised food safety. Even though the cyclospor outbreak was just declared to be over, all of us still don't feel 100% confident eating a Caesar salad. Managing all these overlapping contamination crises can make a trip to the grocery store feel confusing and hard to navigate and I'm not going to lie, even I'm starting to feel a little bitter. Why am I spending time second-guessing and re-stragizing around my favorite recipes when we're supposed to have not just one but several regulatory government bodies that are supposed to make sure the food of the supermarket is safe. So that's what I'm getting into today. How the flaws in our food safety system are creating issues beyond what we choose to grab in the produce aisle. To parse through these questions, a food and fear I'm here with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, who are about this for the Atlantic. Eric, welcome to it's been a minute. Thanks for having me. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Loose and you're listening to it's been a minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. A reminder, if you love, it's been a minute which from the sweet comments y'all have been leaving, it sounds like maybe you do. Be sure to follow or subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app. That way you get new episodes the moment they drop. Okay, so there have been quite a few overlapping outbreaks of foodborne illness this summer. How dangerous are these outbreaks and how many people have been impacted by them? Well, you know, some of these outbreaks are more dangerous than others. Backlospora is relatively mild. You're going to feel really lousy, maybe for a few weeks. You're going to spend more time on the job than you would like to, but it generally does not have long term impact on your health. But there are other pathogens that are much more serious. Salmonella, which is incredibly prevalent. Salmonella makes you very, very sick, but it can cause a kind of reactive arthritis that could last for years. It can cause a salmonella type induced sepsis that can really threaten you. And one of the most disturbing of all is botulism. This past year we had a small outbreak of botulism that was linked to infant formula. So if you dismantle the food safety system and you're not testing for dangerous pathogens and you don't have the ability to trace back contaminated food to its source and you don't have the ability to recall that food. That means that most of the illnesses will never be traced to the food that cause them and the companies that sold the food won't be totally responsible. It's sort of amazing to me that in the year 2026 we're even having this conversation. This is what up in Sinclair wrote about 120 years ago. The jungle. Yeah, it was going to say. Yeah. That was when we got our first federal food safety legislation because up in Sinclair wrote about rats being turned into sausage and it was true. It wasn't just tabloid stuff. Foodborne illness, it's not exactly uncommon. Like you said, there's varying degrees to which you can get sick depending on what you're interacting with, what pathogen your body's interacting with. What has happened to our food system in the past two decades? How did we get to where we are today from, I guess, between when you wrote fast food nation to sort of now, like, how did we get here? Well, you know, food is never going to be perfectly safe. Just in the same way that being alive is always going to entail risk. The question is, how much risk is there going to be and then who bears the responsibility in the cost when someone gets sick? This is a classic failure of a market system because if you look at Adam Smith and his notion of the free market, people have perfect information and their buying choices, therefore, are the invisible hand of God coming to the right solutions. But when you go to the supermarket and you look at two packages of me, there's no way for you to tell which one may be completely contaminated with bacteria and which one is relatively clean. And what that does is that benefits the companies who cheat, the companies that are sloppy because it's more expensive to produce food without these pathogens in it. So there's been a huge pressure from industry not to be held responsible because if they were forced to put on the label, this meat contains salmonella, ecoli, et cetera, et cetera. And then another label says this doesn't. Consumers could make the right choice. But in the absence of that, we are at the mercy of these companies. Now, when you have a few big companies controlling the food system and when the hamburger isn't being ground in your local butcher shop, but it's being ground in a gigantic factory that puts out millions of pounds of ground beef. When there's a problem, it's not a little problem. It's a big problem. And I think there's some. It's a multi-state problem. Or it could even be international. I mean, in some of these baby formula recalls, the baby formula had also been shipped overseas. When you look at infant formula, there's dozens of different ingredients. And if one of those ingredients is in any way contaminated, it can contaminate infant formulas being sold throughout the world. I don't want people to only live on boiled rice and the simplest food that can't contaminate them and second them. But this is a real problem. I mean, even when you mentioned boiled rice, there was a recall of rice products earlier this year due to undisclosed foreign materials. And in July of this year, consumer reports tested 142 samples representing 52 rice products and found detectable levels of arsenic, cadmium, and mercury in every sample tested while lead was detected in 66 samples. Yeah, arsenic often in rice. Obviously, you can't eat without risk, but are there, or were there at least some parts of our food safety system that actually worked well? The elimination largely of E. Coli-157, H7, from ground beef is a tremendous food safety success. And there are people like the attorney Bill Marlar and the food activist Barbara Koalcheck, whose son was killed by a tainted hamburger who deserve enormous credit for this success. And also Rosa Delora, a congresswoman who has been a tireless champion of food safety. So that is a huge success. But it has to be seen in the light of what the Trump administration is doing right now. There's something called food net that was set up by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It took years to set up this surveillance network for dangerous pathogens. And what it did was it tested food and it was a way of tracking dangerous pathogen outbreaks connected to food. It was hugely important and it was really the way that the federal government would know what's happening in our food system, who's getting sick and what's sickening them. And one of the things that the Trump administration did was cut food net pretty much by three-quarters. And what that meant was that instead of tracking eight dangerous pathogens in food, they decided to cut back only to two. And they said it was in order to save money. So the other six are kind of like left up to chance now? We don't know. We don't know if people are being sickened by these other pathogens. I mean, I think if you get listeria, it's a very deadly disease. I mean, yeah, it is. And I think that just goes to show just how consequential this conversation is, especially in terms of the people among us who are the most defenseless. I mean, you've touched on baby formula, but I think a lot of people don't realize that food board illness really affects baby formula. Talk to me about cases that you know about with regard to baby formula, what the risks are and how devastating that can be. And I think infant formula is a really good example to look at, because if you're one of these libertarians and you think we should be able to ride our motorcycle without a helmet and you should build a smoke cigarettes and adults, you know, fine, I think for adults, if you're willing to take that risk, then you should be free to take that risk. But infants are the most innocent, helpless, dependent members of society, and you would think that every human society would have as its first goal to protect innocent babies, and yet we've seen again and again large recalls of powdered infant formula and as I wrote about in the Atlantic there was a small scale outbreak of botulism this past year that was tied to infant formula and you know infant formula has many ingredients from many different locations all being put together in that one canister of formula so in the same way that you look at an automobile as having all these different parts that can come from different suppliers Yeah, and maybe there's a recall of your automobile because one of those parts fails when you're looking at infant formula and powdered formula It's a highly processed food and you know I'm not saying that these companies deliberately won anyone any infants to get sick, but it's very hard to do properly and as the scale increases the potential scale the problem increases now we talked earlier about the difference between you know if you get a hamburger from a butcher shop and there's something wrong at that butcher shop maybe you know people in that neighborhood are going to get sick If the hamburger grinder is shipping food throughout the world people throughout the world will get sick and the same is true with infant formula now one of the remarkable things and the speaks to the monopoly power of our food system is in the United States there are two companies the control 80% Of the market for infant formula now as a solution if there's going to be a problem with the formula It's going to be a big problem because there's only two companies controlling the market with infant formula More than half of the formula in the United States is purchased by the federal government Right it's dispensed through WIC yeah, yeah, so if we wanted to change the infant formula industry We could do it in months by really firstly. I think using antitrust enforcement against these two companies and secondly You know leveraging the buying power of the federal government to make sure that everything humanly possible is being done to make sure that this formula is free of pathogens and If there's a problem that formula is off the shelves of supermarkets immediately I mean in the most recent botulism Recall there was evidence that botulism Botulism was being spread to infants and yet it took weeks to get some of that formula off the shelves Wow, and that's because there's been huge cutbacks at the FDA There have been huge huge cutbacks at the USDA, which is responsible for the safety of meat and these government agencies have been understaffed and We are going to pay the price for those with our health Coming up after the break Because companies are able to get away with selling contaminated food and the companies that are really working hard not to are at a Composed of disadvantage too often stick around I often hear comparisons between food safety in the United States versus food safety in Europe I mean, you know you wrote about Denmark's stringent poultry regulations that have dramatically reduced Salmonella incidents. We don't follow those same regulations here There are also some food additives to I think that many people have questions about right that are Perhaps banned in some other countries that we eat here in the United States Why are our protections in the US so low or at least very different in comparison to say other Develop nations like in Europe like what makes it hard to enforce Stronger regulations when it comes to food safety with what's what's what's talking through the difference there in the United States There has been tremendous pressure in Washington against strict food safety rules From the food companies. It's just as simple as that and in Europe you have the same pressure But the their agencies are more independent. I mean the government accountability office the GAO In the United States has been calling for a single food safety agency That has strong powers for decades The United States is unique among developed nations in having its food safety Regulation divided among a number of different federal agencies. I mean I mentioned that the FDA is you know responsible for 80% of the food the USDA is responsible for meat But you know you have instances where there's runoff from cattle that contaminate lettuce And this makes investigations and this makes enforcement much more difficult the most absurd example is that If a frozen pizza has pepperoni on it It's regulated by the USDA if it doesn't have any meat on it. It's regulated by the FDA And every other major European country has a single food safety Agency that has strict enforcement powers. They vary in how effective they are but in Scandinavia They've done a remarkable job at eliminating Salmonella from poultry when consumer reports Started buying chicken at American supermarkets. They found that almost the third of the broiler chickens were contaminated by salmonella and what that means is that You have to be very careful bringing that product Into your kitchen because even if you cook it and you kill all the salmonella You have to be really careful about how you're contaminating your sink or your cutting board or your or your knives and It shouldn't be you know one of the things that industry does Consistently is put the onus of food safety onto the consumer You know 25 years ago when I was writing about contaminated beef the industry's mantra was just cook it And again that didn't address the issues of Contaminating your kitchen with e coli and the dangers form of e coli could be spread by just By other foods, but very easily food is always going to pose some risk And yet the risk in the United States right now is unnecessarily high I wonder I mean you know when we talk about foods that are safe though It's hard not to talk about class and access. I mean as you mentioned For instance a lot of families need government assistance to feed their babies like you said The government is buying half of you know more than half of the country's supply of formula to disperse through WIC But you know, I mean you also mentioned you were about this like even in the past two years The baby formula the government was buying has been contaminated like how are these food safety issues putting the most vulnerable among us at risk It's exactly what they're doing And you know when you think about who is most at risk from food-borne pathogens its infants children the elderly and the immunosuppressed It's basically in a rational compassionate society the people who we should be spending the most time and energy protecting Are the people who are being most harmed and you're absolutely right There's a huge element of class involved in that the government could Transform the infant formula industry very quickly if it wanted to and this is powdered formula that's being distributed You know to people who um Don't have this high-end income one issue that we're not talking about that isn't connected directly to food safety But has huge health implications are ultra-process foods like the the fast foods that Cause all kinds of health problems and are essentially Too often the food or the poor an ordinary working people and they're the ones who are suffering the worst Health effects of it Well also too, I mean if you have more resources right when outbreaks like these happen and maybe you feel like oh Well, I can get my meat from the local butcher which now it can be a more expensive endeavor in some ways right because it might be Locally sourced and sold at a higher price and so on and so forth because it's become like an artisanal thing Yeah, and that can carry a higher price tag similarly with shopping at farmers markets like there can be a Listen like at the farmers market that I go to there are some stands that end up being cheaper than what I would get in the grocery store But there are also many others that are much more you can end up spending $40 on three tomatoes and six peaches Which would not probably happen at the local grocery store But yeah, I mean the people with more resources have alternatives when outbreaks like these happen Where they can sort of maybe turn to a less industrialized food system Which again, I mean One of the upsides of regulation is that you have the resources to test lots of things It doesn't always happen in the United States as we're discussing but the resources are they are sometimes the larger sort of industrial System or a larger sort of governing body. And so it's not like shopping at a farmer's market is inherently going to be a safe, or carry zero percent risk, as I said. But there is an alternative offered that can feel safer to some people. Right. And there's one other element to this. Access to health care. If you are sick and you are wealthy or well to do and you have good health insurance, you go see your doctor. And if you're not, you may suffer much more serious consequences and be sick for longer. One other thing is fast food workers rarely have sick pay. Restaurant workers often have to go to work sick. And when restaurant workers or meatpacking workers have to continue working while sick, that can contribute to spreading food-borne pathogens. So we have this system that is pretty brutal in many respects. If people had health care, if people had sick pay, we would not have perfectly safe food. But we'd have so many fewer harms. And the system we have right now allows companies to impose their external costs on the rest of society. And what that means is if you get sick and you can't trace it back to its source, you're going to pay the price. You're going to pay the medical costs. And the company that's sick and you is going to get away, Scott, free. I mean, what you're discussing, it's really not new, right? These sort of anxieties around our industrialized food system and feeling like we can't trust our food. I mean, how is the legacy of historical food exposures like those detailed and evidence and clear the jungle, which was published. As you mentioned, 120 years ago, published as a book in 1906. How did these moments shape the American fear that industrial food is inherently unsafe? Yeah. Well, what was remarkable in 1906 is that we had a president who read books and president Roosevelt, he had a Roosevelt read the jungle. He suspected that there was bad stuff in the meat because when he had been fighting in Cuba, the beef that was sent to his troops was disgusting. So he conducted an independent investigation of the meat packing industry. Net with up in Sinclair really didn't like up in Sinclair, but he felt like this was what was going on in these meat packing plants. And so we got our first important federal food safety legislation after that. And the industry's attitude in fighting against this food safety legislation 120 years ago was almost identical to their attitude today. And in fast food nation and in this Atlantic article, I quote one of the meat packing executives who was opposing this new federal legislation 120 years ago. And he said, "We are paying all we care to pay." And, you know, if you want the market to work efficiently, the companies that are spending extra to produce food without pathogens should be rewarded, and the companies that are selling contaminated food should be punished. And right now, the incentive is exactly the opposite because companies are able to get away with selling contaminated food and the companies that are really working hard not to are at a competitive disadvantage too often. So if you had a system that treated animals and human beings with respect, you might also have a system that rewarded companies that produce healthy, safe food and punish companies that produce unhealthy contaminated food. And this is not a pipe dream. This isn't like some ridiculous utopian notion. It's something that other countries are doing quite effectively. And I get back to what I started out with. The food is never going to be perfectly safe. There's always risk in life. But it doesn't have to be as bad as it is today. You know, just as a shopper, as a person who's like going to the grocery store, farmers market, trying to figure out what to eat, it's very easy to feel helpless in all this. Like, ultimately, there is risk involved in eating anything. You're absolutely right. You never know what microorganisms or pathogens could be living, you know, in that tomato or slice of cheese or whatever. But what changes would have to be made for us to really feel like the food we're buying from our grocery stores and farmers markets isn't going to make us sick. Yeah. You know, again, we need the ability at a governmental level to widely test food for dangerous pathogens. Once you find that dangerous pathogen in food, the government needs the ability to trace it back to its source and trace and track where all that food is in different supermarkets. And then we need the ability to swiftly recall it, get it off the shelves. And right now, it's remarkable how little power and ability the government has to test, trace and recall. And so that leaves it up to consumers. This is one of those problems that's not going to be solved by your shopping. It's going to be our activism as citizens to ensure that government agencies are acting on behalf of consumers and not on behalf of these food companies. And again, it doesn't have to be the way it is. Well, Eric, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate this conversation. Thank you so much. You take care. That was Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation. You can find his piece, should we be afraid of our food and the Atlantic? This episode of It's Been A Minute was produced by Corey Antonio Rose. This episode was edited by Nina Patuck, our supervising producer is Sheriff Vincent. Our executive producer is Barton Gurdwood. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sanguini. All right, that's all for this episode of It's Been A Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Loose. Talk soon!