Is What You Consume Really “Safe”?

Food has a huge impact on our society today, from our health, to our relationships, and to our culture. It is fascinating how E-Coli outbreaks are becoming a bigger and bigger threat in the food industry; especially since the FDA had implemented higher standards on a food safety regulations.

The CDC (Center for Disease Control) “estimates that each year STEC causes 265,000 illness, 3,600 hospitalizations and 30 deaths in the United States. Even if you refer to the New York Times, every few months there is a new article with about another E-Coli outbreak.

A few examples of recent articles are “Officials Identify a Source in The Romaine Lettuce E.Coli Outbreak,” “Four More People Die From Tainted Romaine Lettuce,” and “E-Coli Outbreak Tied to Romaine Lettuce Expands to 16 States,” With these potentially lethal outbreaks becoming more and more frequent it is important for us all to be informed about what E-coli is and where it comes from.

“To me when I think of E-Coli, I think of sickened animals,” Michael Rado, supply chain management and information major stated.

Rado also mentioned how he also heard a “rumor” about produce becoming contaminated with E-Coli resulting from the farm workers not washing their hands after using the restroom and from being unhygienic while working in the field/industry.

According to the CDC, E-Coli is a type of bacteria that is found in the intestines of humans and animals, food, and the environment (such as the water supply). The CDC also classifies the different strands of E-Coli into two categories. One is “harmless” E-Coli, which include the various strands that are healthy and help aid the digestive systems of humans and animals and “harmful” E-Coli which is the strands of the bacteria such as STEC (E-Coli O157:H7) that result in illness and can potentially be lethal.

E-Coli is most commonly noted to affect the meat industry (especially beef) but is becoming a growing threat to the produce industry. Lately, we have seen more produce such as lettuce and pre-packaged salads being contaminated with E-Coli mainly because of contaminated water.

The Water Project, a non-profit organization aimed at providing water in sub-Saharan Africa has done research that has proven that “possible sources of fecal contamination include: agricultural runoff, wildlife that uses the water as their natural habitat, runoff from areas contaminated with pet manure, wastewater treatment plants,and on-site septic systems. Heavy precipitation may cause these organisms to be washed into creeks, rivers, streams, lakes, or groundwater.”

Although this research explains why E-Coli contamination rates are steadily increasing, we still have to wonder why we are not making significant progress in getting this outbreak under control. One of the reasons might be because we are not properly informed about what is going on or because we do not stop and take the time to think about the situation at hand.

“What I want to eat would be the first thing that would come to my mind when I think about food,” Dudley Saintil, a bio-health major said. Then he continued to explain that he would only stop to seriously think about food and its importance to the society if someone made him stop to think about it.

We can even take the popular restaurant Chipotle as an example. The FDA stated in a report that in 2016, 55 people who ate at Chipotle were infected with STEC and in 2015, 43 Chipotle restaurants were shut down in order to work with health officials until their restaurant met their standards.

“People may just love the place too much,” Rado stated.

In their report, the FDA also mentioned that Mexican chain restaurants like that are hard to conduct trackbacks on since their food products contain avast amount of different ingredients that come from different suppliers. As a result, it is extremely challenging and time consuming for them to pinpoint one particular food item to blame or to point the blame at one particular supplier. But even with this information being noted, Chipotle is still one of the most popular chain restaurants for this generation.

“They want to chase the fashion of food,” said Dr. Dongyan Mu, professor of sustainability science

At the end of the day, food is an essential part of our life which is why we should all take the time to stop and think about where our food comes from, if it is safe, and how we can try to protect ourselves from contracting E-Coli. According to Dr.Mu, a few ways we can take action is by improving personal hygiene, drinking boiled water, washing our food carefully, and requesting stricter regulations to food industries.