Everything Has Poop On It

the FDA, E. coli, and all the things we’ll never know

my least favorite game

If there’s shit all over my food, I expect somebody to say something. I’m old fashioned like that. I thought we’d all agreed that none of us should eat poop, and we certainly shouldn’t be paying for the privilege. Well apparently, that deal is off. There was a massive E. coli outbreak over the last few months and almost none of us heard about it. Sure, there was plenty of other horrifying news to grab our attention but that’s not why we all missed it. We missed the story because there was no story. An outbreak of E. coli across fifteen states that sickened at least eighty-eight people, killed one, and hospitalized many, including a nine year old who almost died from kidney failure, didn’t warrant a press release from the FDA. We got an executive order about water pressure in our showers but not one word about a deadly pathogen in the food of at least 30% of the United States. Our food system in the US, which has always been precarious, is getting more dangerous. As I was writing this piece, the news broke that the FDA is ending most of its routine food safety inspections. Expect lots of poop from here on out.

The country is only finding out about the full scope of this E. coli outbreak because of public records requests filed by attorneys in nine different cases against Taylor Farms, a Salinas-based grower believed to be the source of the poop lettuce, whose findings were then shared with NBC News. Last October, the very same Taylor Farms issued a voluntary recall of their onions, which are supplied to McDonalds, because of another E. coli outbreak that hospitalized over a hundred people and killed one. The FDA issued an advisory during that outbreak. When asked why they didn’t issue one for Taylor Farms this year, the FDA told NBC News “that it was restricted by federal law from disclosing ‘confidential commercial information.’” Hmm, I wonder what’s changed since last year.

It's tempting to attribute all of this to general incompetence instead of malicious intent, but you’d be wrong. Over 10,000 people were laid off from the Department of Health and Human Serves (HHS) over the last few weeks which also oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the FDA, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and National Institutes of Health (NIH). According to a staffer who spoke with PR Weekly anonymously, “They essentially fired all FDA communicators from the top to the bottom, from the commissioner's office on down to the centers and the divisions.” They can’t tell us about all the shit covering our food if they fire everyone responsible for testing, tracking, and then announcing where all the poop is. See? The system is working perfectly. If that wasn’t enough, last month the FDA announced that it was placing a 30-month delay on a rule set to go into effect next January that would have increased traceability and record keeping throughout the food supply chain that would have made recalls faster and more efficient. Cool, very cool.

this gives you a sense of the problem at CAFOs

It's worth mentioning that there’s poop all over our food because we barely regulate the waste runoff from livestock farms. Yeah, it always comes back to our horrific factory farms. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, are supposed to be regulated by the EPA and federal law requires those known to discharge waste to get permits, but spoiler alert: they all discharge waste. It’s a huge problem. Also, as of 2023, the EPA stated only 6,266 of the nation’s 21,237 CAFOs had permits. This shit problem is massive, and the data is sparse. In 2012, the most recent data I could dig up, US CAFOs produced 369 million tons of manure which is 13 times more than the entire US population created in the same year. Most of our shit goes through waste treatment facilities; the CAFOs just stick theirs in big pits or lagoons and/or spray it into the air. The amount of poop has only increased since 2012 and it’s not like the old poop went away. It’s just sitting there like an old pit toilet waiting for a big storm or other weather event to flood and poison the soil, ground water, and local communities if it hasn’t already leached into the water system. Hell, you even can smell these poop lagoons when you fly over them. Naturally, the CAFOs are located near other farms that grow the fruit and veggies we eat. Romaine and other crops that grow low to the ground, like melons and onions, are the most likely to get contaminated because they’re much more likely to come into contact with contaminated water and soil. Lettuce is out here taking the blame that ultimately belongs to these factory farms. Vegetables don’t poop after all.

we’ll all be saying this from here on out

It is easy to be distracted by how unaffordable all of our food is getting but that obscures how unsafe our food is also going to become. Regulation and safety practices are disappearing from slaughterhouses, factories, and everywhere else as legions of federal workers are fired and federal funds are pulled from countless programs that did everything from supply our food pantries to research pediatric cancer. Bird flu is still raging while egg producers rack in record profits by pushing the costs on to consumers. States are pulling fluoride out of the water system despite the fact that none of us can afford to go to the dentist. I don’t know where we go from here, but I want you to be safe. Shop as smart as you can, wash all your produce thoroughly, and cook everything well. There’s a lot of shit going around. And when the revolution finally starts, I hope to see you in the streets.

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Any advice for staying safe in a food system that doesn’t care about you? Drop them below.

Xoxo,

Michelle