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"Chicken Salmonella Thanks to Meat Industry Lawsuit"
Mexico banned the importation of Foster Farms chicken
on public health grounds, but it still sold in the United States.
Why wasn't there a recall?
How could they continue to legally sell
chicken contaminated with a virulent strain of salmonella?
It all goes back to Supreme Beef vs. USDA-
a court case in which the meat industry sued the USDA
after the agency had the audacity to try to
shut down a slaughter plant that was repeatedly
found violating salmonella standards.
The meat industry won.
The Federal Appeals Court ruled that it was not
illegal to sell contaminated meat.
In fact, what was illegal was the USDA
trying to protect the public by shutting down the plant.
Because normal cooking practices destroy salmonella
"the presence of salmonella in meat products"
"does not render them injurious to health."
Salmonella-infected meat is thus legal to sell to the consumer.
But even though consumers can eliminate salmonella
in chicken by proper cooking, we can still be exposed to
"and acquire a salmonella infection from cross-contamination"
"with salmonella from raw chicken during meal preparation."
If you measure the transfer rate from naturally
contaminated poultry legs purchased in supermarkets
to cutting boards in the kitchen,
overall 80% of leg skins in contact with the cutting board
for 10 minutes transferred campylobacter infection to the cutting board.
That's another food poisoning bacteria found in chicken feces.
And then if you put cooked chicken back
in the same cutting board, there's about a 30% chance
it will become recontaminated.
Even though people know that washing hands
can decrease the risk of food poisoning
only about 2/3 say they actually do it.
Even though most people know about cross-contamination
a third don't even report washing their cutting boards.
Though awareness appears to be growing,
as we saw before, even when people wash
the cutting boards with hot, soapy water
you can still find salmonella and campylobacter.
The reason most people have more bacteria from feces
in their kitchen than in their bathroom
is because people rinse their chickens in the sink...
not the toilet.
So even though cooking can kill salmonella
it can still contaminate our kitchen and make us sick.
Foster Farms swore they'd try to reduce
the number of chickens they were producing
with salmonella from 1 in 4, down to just 1 in 20...
why not zero tolerance like they have
in countries like Sweden?
Because then, as the Head of Food Safety for Costco noted,
"you wouldn't have a poultry industry."
Other countries have been able to raise chickens
without salmonella though.
But as one industry-funded scientist explained,
if the entire onus to produce safe products is placed on an industry
"then it gives the consumer no personal responsibility"
"to handle their product correctly."
What...?!
That's like a car company saying,
"WE can't make safe cars because then no one wears a seat belt."