Salmonella is naturally occurring. In the wake of outbreaks, like the one linked to Foster Farms chicken, it’s an often-repeated phrase meant to assuage consumer fears and absolve corporate responsibility. But the phrase leaves out a key piece of information, where Salmonella naturally occurs. Salmonella lives in the intestines of humans and other animals. It doesn’t “naturally occur” on the boneless, skinless chicken breasts or the wings and drumsticks you buy at the store. It gets there through a process of contamination. People can only get Salmonella infections when they eat or drink foods that have microscopic amounts of human or animal fecal matter on them. How does Salmonella get from the place where it naturally occurs to your kitchen table? Like E.coli and other bacteria … [Read more...]

The Foster Farms Salmonella outbreak has consumers wondering, how did we get here? How can a company that has sickened at least 472 people, many of whom have been hospitalized with drug-resistant infections, tell consumers their product is safe if handled properly and not issue a recall? And why, if the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) found Salmonella levels on chicken produced at the company’s Fresno plant to be three and half times the federal standard, has production continued uninterrupted. The answer is Supreme Beef. During the 1990s, Supreme Beef Processors Inc., a Dallas meat processor and grinder, supplied millions of pounds of ground beef to the National School Lunch Program. In 1999, Salmonella on the product became a point of concern for the USDA. In testing, … [Read more...]

A Foster Farms chicken Salmonella outbreak has sickened at least 338 people in 20 states, according to the latest update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  About 40 percent of those sickened have been hospitalized with one of seven outbreak strains, some of which are resistant to multiple antibiotics. Foster Farms brand chicken has been identified as the likely source of the outbreak through epidemiologic, laboratory, and traceback investigations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS) issued a Public Health Alert about the chicken on Oct. 7  based on concerns about conditions in three Foster Farms facilities, but the company did not issue a recall. On October 12, a San Francisco Costco store on El Camino Real … [Read more...]

The Foster Farms Salmonella outbreak has a recurring theme: Yes, Foster Farms chicken has Salmonella on it, but so does a lot of other chicken. There have been two Salmonella outbreaks linked to Foster Farms chicken this year and during both of them the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the California Department of Public Health, Foster Farms and others have all made that point accompanied with advice that consumers ought to handle raw chicken with care. Handling raw foods with care is good advice: don't cross contaminate, use a meat thermometer, wash your hands. But is there a level of contamination that tips the scales decidedly out of the consumer’s favor? Consider that one of the only recalls issued in connection with … [Read more...]