Fast Food Nation: What The All-American Meal is Doing to the World (47 page)

“The first commandment is that only production counts”:
A transcript of Murphy’s testimony appears in Andreas, Meatpackers and Beef Barons, pp. 171–83.

little has changed since IBP was caught:
For Ferrell’s side of the case, I have relied upon “Plaintiff’s Statement of Specific Disputed Facts and Additional Material Facts,”
Michael D. Ferrell v IBP, Inc
., United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, Western Division, May 7, 1999.

183
IBP disputes this version:
For IBP’s version of events, I have relied upon “Statement of Undisputed Facts in Support of Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment,”
Michael D. Ferrell v IBP, Inc.
, United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, Western Division, March 6, 1999.

“numerous, pervasive, and outrageous”:
Quoted in “Labor Board Charges Monfort with Discrimination; Orders Reinstatement, Back Pay, and Union Election,”
PR Newswire
, April 12, 1990. See also James M. Biers, “Monfort Flouted Labor Laws,”
Denver Post
, November 4, 1995.

184
Colorado was one of the first states:
See Ben Wear, “Lawmakers Seek Cure, Not Band-Aid; All Sides Cry Foul in Fight to Protect Interests,”
Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph
, February 3, 1991; Karen Bowers, “The Big Hurt: Truth Is the First Casualty in the Political War over Amendment 11,”
Denver Westword
, October 19, 1994; and Stuart Steers, “Injured Workers Have Borne the Brunt of Workers’ Comp ‘Reform’ in Colorado,”
Denver Westword
, July 19, 1996.

185
Under Colorado’s new law:
The figures on missing digits and other injuries are from the 1999 Workers’ Compensation Act, State of Colorado.

Congressman Cass Ballenger:
See “Congressman Argues for an Overhaul of OSHA,”
Business Insurance
, July 10, 1995; David Maraniss and Michael Weisskopf, “OSHA’s Enemies Find Themselves in High Places,”
Washington Post
, July 24,1995; and Figura, “New OSHA.”

by the late 1990s had already reached an all-time low:
See “Study Finds Decline in Workplace Inspections,” AP, September 5, 1998.

The plant had never been inspected by OSHA:
See Maraniss and Weisskopf, “OSHA’s Enemies.”

Congressman Joel Hefley:
See “Congressman Argues for an Overhaul”; “Hutchison, Hefley Introduce Proposals in House, Senate to Overhaul OSHA,”
Asbestos and Lead Abatement Report
, April 7, 1997; and Erin Emery, “Political Novice Alford Faces Hefley,”
Denver Post
, October 14, 1998.

Interviews with two of the nation’s leading experts on Shiga toxin–producing
E. coli
— Dr. David Acheson, an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Tufts University Medical School, and Dr. Patricia M. Griffin, chief of the Foodborne Diseases Epidemiology Section, Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — helped me understand some of the distinctive characteristics and potential dangers of these organisms. A pair of journal articles greatly influenced my view of the role of the fast food and meatpacking industries in spreading disease: Gregory L. Armstrong, Jill Hollingsworth, and J. Glenn Morris, Jr., “Emerging Foodborne Pathogens:
Escherichia coli
0157:H7 as a Model of Entry of a New Pathogen into the Food Supply of the Developed World,”
Epidemiologic Reviews
18, no. 1 (1996); and Robert V. Tauxe, “Emerging Foodborne Diseases: An Evolving Public Health Challenge,”
Emerging Infectious Diseases
3, no. 4 (October/December 1997). Tauxe is the chief of the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch at the CDC. Throughout this chapter, the figures on the annual incidence of various foodborne pathogens — as well as on the number of deaths, hospitalizations, and so on — come from the most thorough nationwide study of food poisonings to date: Paul S. Mead, Laurence Slutsker, Vance Dietz, Linda F. McCaig, Joseph S. Bresee, Craig Shapiro, Patricia M. Griffin, and Robert V. Tauxe, “Food-Related Illness and Death in the United States,”
Emerging Infectious Diseases
5, no. 5 (September/October 1999).

For the general reader, the two best books on foodborne pathogens are
Spoiled: The Dangerous Truth about a Food Chain Gone Haywire
(New York: Basic Books, 1997) and
It Was Probably Something You Ate: A Practical Guide to Avoiding and Surviving Foodborne Illness
(New York: Penguin, 1999). Nicols Fox is the author of both, and she was extremely generous about sharing her unsettling knowledge with me. Dr. Neal D. Bernard, at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, told me in gruesome detail what America’s livestock are being fed today. I am grateful to Lee Harding, Nancy Donley, and Mary Heersink — three people whose lives were changed in varying degrees by E. coli 0157:H7 — for speaking to me about their experiences. Donna Rosenbaum, one of the founders of Safe Tables Our Priority, provided much useful information about the meatpacking industry’s role in outbreaks. Heather Klinkhamer, the former program director at STOP, graciously let me rummage through her files and borrow literally hundreds of them.

David Theno and Tim Biela spent a day with me, explaining how currently available technology has helped Jack in the Box reduce the threat of foodborne illness. Steve Bjerklie shared his expertise on the meat industry’s response to food safety issues. For the Hudson Beef outbreak and federal meat recall policy, I relied heavily on the transcripts of two USDA meetings: the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection meeting held in Washington, D.C., September 10, 1997, and the FSIS Recall Policy Public Meeting held in Arlington, Virginia, September 24, 1997. Jan Sharp, one of the U.S. attorneys in the Hudson Foods case, and Steve Kay, the editor of
Cattle Buyers Weekly
, were also helpful. David Kroeger, the president of the Midwest Council of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, spoke to me about the effects of the Streamlined Inspection System during the late 1980s and of the reduced inspections under today’s new HACCP plans. The other USDA meat inspectors that I interviewed were equally informative but preferred not to be named. Felicia Nestor, at the Government Accountability Project, sent me a thick stack of USDA inspection reports given to her by federal whistleblowers. A straightforward account of the effort to create a science-based system of meat inspection can be found in
Food Safety: Risk-Based Inspections and Microbial Monitoring Needed for Meat and Poultry
(GAO Reports, June 1, 1994). The Center for Public Integrity has done a fine job investigating the meatpacking industry’s close ties to members of Congress. One of its reports,
Safety Last: The Politics of E. coli and other Food-Borne Pathogens
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Public Integrity, 1998) outlines how public health measures have in recent years been framed to suit the needs of well-funded private interests.

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193
called Sandra Gallegos:
For the investigation of Harding’s illness, I relied on interviews with Lee Harding and Sandra Gallegos, as well as on Julie Collins, “Hudson Beef Recall: How the Link Was Discovered,”
Journal of Environmental Health
, December 1, 1997; Tom Kenworthy, “Friendly Barbecue May Have Led to Meat Recall,”
Washington Post
, August 24, 1997; Tom Morgenthau, “Health Pros’ Detective Work Helps Arrest Villain E. coli,”
Portland Oregonian
, August 31, 1997; Ann Schrader, “Tracing E. coli to Meat Earns Awards for Workers,”
Denver Post
, September 18, 1997; and the transcript of the NAC Meat and Poultry Inspection Hearing, September 10, 1997.

194
Colorado was one of only six states:
Meat and Poultry Inspection Hearing transcript, p. 396.

primarily to supply hamburgers for the Burger King chain:
See Melanie Warner, “How Tyson Ate Hudson,”
Fortune
, October 27, 1997.

Roughly 35 million pounds of ground beef
: See Steve Kay, “Hudson Recall Was Larger Than Reported,”
Cattle Buyers Weekly
, September 29, 1997. Kay’s estimate may in fact be too conservative, since it is based on a production rate of 400,000 pounds a day. The Hudson Beef plant could actually produce twice that amount daily.

195
roughly 200,000 people are sickened:
Derived from the annual numbers cited in Mead et al., “Food-Related Illness and Death”: 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths.

more than a quarter of the American population:
Ibid.

can precipitate long-term ailments:
See James A. Lindsay, “Chronic Sequelae of Foodborne Disease,”
Emerging Infectious Diseases
3, no. 4 (October/December 1997).

entirely new kinds of outbreaks are now occurring:
See Tauxe, “Emerging Food-borne Diseases.”

196
a newly emerged pathogen:
See Armstrong et al., “Emerging Foodborne Patho-gens.”

thirteen large packinghouses now slaughter:
Cited in James M. MacDonald and Michael Ollinger, “U.S. Meat Slaughter Consolidating Rapidly,”
USDA Food Review
, May 1,1997.

more than a dozen other new foodborne pathogens:
Cited in Tauxe, “Emerging Foodborne Diseases.”

infectious agents that have not yet been identified:
See “Food-Related Illness and Death.”

defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals:
See Consumer Product Safety Commission, press releases, June 1997–June 1999.

197
7.5 percent of the ground beef samples:
The figures on ground beef contamination are from “Nationwide Federal Plant Raw Ground Beef Microbiological Survey, August 1993–March 1994,” United States Deartment of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service, Science and Technology, Microbiology Division, April 1996.

fatal in about one out of… cases:
Mead et al., “Food-Related Illness and Death.”

“a food for the poor”:
David Gerard Hogan,
Selling ’Em by the Sack
(New York: New York University Press, 1997), p. 22.

“The hamburger habit is just about as safe”:
Quoted ibid., p. 32.

198
“nothing but White Castle Hamburgers and water”:
By the end of the experiment the student was eating up to two dozen hamburgers a day. Quoted ibid., p. 33; Tennyson,
Hamburger Heaven
, p. 24.

pork had been the most popular:
Interview with James Ratchford, American Meat Institute.

almost half of the employment in American agriculture… annual revenues generated by beef:
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Fact Sheet.

More than two-thirds of those hamburgers were bought:
Cited in David Theno, “Raising the Bar to Ensure Safer Burgers,”
San Diego Union-Tribune
, August 27, 1997.

children between the ages of seven and thirteen ate:
A survey by McDonald’s once found that children under the age of seven ate 1.7 hamburgers a week; those from seven to thirteen ate 6.2. People from thirteen to thirty ate 5.2; from thirty to thirty-five, 3.3; from thirty-five to sixty, 2.6; and over sixty, 1.3. Cited in Boas and Chain,
Big Mac
, p. 218.

more than seven hundred people in at least four states:
See “Update: Multistate Outbreak of
Escherichia coli
0157:H7 Infections from Hamburgers — Western United States, 1992–1993,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, April 16, 1993; and Fox,
Spoiled
, pp. 246–68.

199
In 1982 dozens of children were sickened:
Nicols Fox offers the best account of this outbreak. See Fox,
Spoiled
, pp. 220–29.

“the possibility of a statistical association”:
Quoted ibid., p. 227.

In the eight years since the Jack in the Box outbreak:
I have taken the annual E. coli 0157:H7 numbers from Mead et al., “Food-Related Illness and Death” — 73,480 illnesses; 2,168 hospitalizations; 61 deaths — and multiplied them by 8.

In about 4 percent of reported E. coli 0157:H7 cases
: Cited in Mead et al., “Food-related Illness and Death.”

About 5 percent of the children who develop HUS:
Interview with Dr. Patricia Griffin.

200
the leading cause of kidney failure among children:
Cited in “Isolation of
E. coli
0157:H7 from Sporadic Cases of Hemorrhagic Colitis — United States,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, August 1, 1997.

201
as few as five organisms:
Interview with Dr. David Acheson.

The most common cause of foodborne outbreaks has been:
See “Outbreak — Georgia and Tennessee.”

the feces of deer, dogs, horses, and flies:
See Armstrong et al., “Foodborne Patho-gens.”

did not eat a contaminated burger:
See “Update: Multistate Outbreak.”

remains contagious for about two weeks:
See Armstrong et al., “Foodborne Patho-gens.”

202
E. coli
0157:H7 can replicate in cattle troughs:
See Paul Hammel and Henry J. Cordes, “Holes in the Research:
E. coli
Prompts Few Changes on the Farm from Farm to Fork,”
Omaha World-Herald
, December 15, 1997.

About 75 percent of the cattle in the United States:
Cited in Mitchell Satchell and Stephen J. Hedges, “The Next Bad Beef Scandal? Cattle Feed Now Contains Things Like Chicken Manure and Dead Cats,”
U.S. News & World Report
, September 1, 1997.

millions of dead cats and dead dogs:
Ibid.

cattle blood is still put into the feed:
For the unsettling details of what livestock are now fed, see “Substances Prohibited from Use in Animal Food or Feed; Animal Proteins Prohibited in Ruminant Food; Final Rule,” Part II,
Federal Register
, June 5, 1997; Ellen Ruppel Shell, “Could Mad-Cow Disease Happen Here?”
Atlantic Monthly
, September 1998; and Rebecca Osvath, “Some Feed and Manufacturing Facilities Not Complying with Rules to Prevent BSE, Survey Finds,”
Food Chemical News
, April 3,2000.

A study published a few years ago:
Eric R. Haapapuro, Neal D. Barnard, and Michele Simon, “Review — Animal Waste Used as Livestock Feed: Dangers to Human Health,”
Preventive Medicine
, September/October 1997.

203
during the winter about I percent of the cattle… as much as 50 percent during the summer:
The study was conducted by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. Cited in “Study Urges Pre-Processed Beef Test for
E. coli,” Health Letter on the CDC
, March 13, 2000.