Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you couldn’t have missed the past week’s nationwide recall of a half-billion eggs feared to be contaminated with salmonella bacteria. How could half a billion eggs – more eggs than there are people in the United States – become unsalable?
Part of the story is that we’ve been putting all of our eggs in the same basket. All of the recalled eggs originate with two producers in Iowa – Wright County Egg and Hillendale Farm. Iowa has come to dominate egg production nationally because the cost of feed grain is so cheap in Iowa, because of Iowa’s abundant corn fields. Although the cost of feed grain in Iowa is probably only marginally cheaper than elsewhere in the country, the huge scale of modern agribusiness means that egg production will be located in a few centralized locations in Iowa.
In short, we put all of our eggs in a few Iowa-based egg baskets. This means when there is a problem in the supply chain, it will have massive implications. These Iowa plants with their Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are the ideal breeding grounds for the spread of any disease or contaminants: you have massive, very dense populations whose members, once infected, travel across all fifty states.
Also, with that many egg-laying chickens in such close proximity, prophylactic antibiotics are the order of the day to prevent epidemics that would kill off the chickens laying the golden eggs. But regimens of prophylactic antibiotics of course have side effects: they build up resistance and cause new strains of bacteria to evolve.
What’s the solution? Critics of a pending food safety bill (previously blogged about here), including Walter Olson of the Cato Institute, insist that more regulation is not the answer – that the cost of complying with new regulations will crowd out small-scale producers, such as organic and free range egg producers. You can read Olson’s critique here, in part of a New York Times symposium on the salmonella egg recall.
Of course, as many have rightfully pointed out, the blame for the salmonella outbreak lies not only with the degree of regulatory oversight but with the framework of the oversight. Two different government agencies are responsible for the safety of two intricately connected foodstuffs: the chicken and the egg. The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for egg safety while the Department of Agriculture regulates chickens. (The same bizarre regulatory framework applies to cows and their milk). Having one government agency that oversees both chickens and their eggs might be more efficient. Of course that’s almost too much to hope for.
Critics of new regulation, like Olson, also maintain that big time egg producers like Wright Egg and Hillendale farm already have market incentives to get uncontaminated food to market. Having to destroy half a billion eggs is going to cost them and their shareholders dearly. Yet such a claim would seem to be belied by the checkered safety records of both Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms. In 2000, the owner of Wright County Egg was cited as a “habitual violater” of Iowa environmental law. A few years before that, the egg supplier paid $2 million dollars in fines for safety violations at a Maine farm. Economies of scale can apply not only to production, but also to avoiding regulation. A small time farmer skips a safety precaution and profits a little by it, but when a large agribusiness cuts the same corner it reaps much larger savings.
Massive Iowa egg producers are probably here to stay. Americans, and people around the world, demand low-cost food. So what should we be doing? Well, the FDA’s new egg safety regulations that went into effect in July will help prevent another salmonella egg recall of this scale. Additionally, a salmonella vaccine that is given to hens in Britain and New Zealand has proved effective there.
But, more than likely, we’re going to see more outbreaks on even bigger scales as agribusinesses try to squeeze more productivity out of every square foot of their operations.
Category Archives: Salmonella Outbreak
The FDA Has No Regulations About Acceptable Bacterial Levels In Bagged Salads: Sign Petition To Get Them
Umm, is it 1906 again? Do we need another Pure Food and Drug Act?
Last month, Consumer Reports ran an article entitled Bagged Salad: How Clean?, revealing that some bagged salads contain disturbingly high levels of bacteria and highlighting that there are no FDA regulations about acceptable bacterial levels in leafy greens.
Now the FDA has opened a special docket, where you can register your vote supporting food standards for leafy greens and urging “zero tolerance” for bacteria like E. Coli O157:H7, salmonella and listeria, a standard that already exists for other food products.
More Than A Dozen Massachusetts Consumers Suffer Salmonella Poisoning In Outbreak
Recently, the United States Department of Agriculture instituted the recall of 1,240,000 pounds of Italian sausage manufactured by Rhode Island-based meat packing company, Daniele International, after discovering that a sample of their black pepper salami contained salmonella.
On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control announced that, between July 2009 and the present, approximately 225 people in 44 states have been infected with a particular strain of salmonella, Salmonella Montevideo. Thirteen Massachusetts consumers have been infected with Salmonella Montevideo during that time. Some people believe that at least some of the Salmonella Montevideo episodes can be linked to Daniele International’s black pepper sausage.
Here is a CDC map of the outbreak:
Today, the Associated Press reports that a Chicago man, who suffered salmonella poisoning, has filed a lawsuit against Daniele International and two of Daniele’s pepper suppliers, saying that they failed to take steps to prevent the outbreak.
Salmonellosis, the type of food poisoning caused by consuming salmonella-tainted food, typically produces symptoms such as fever, nausea and cramping. However, in children, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems, salmonellosis can be fatal.
We will keep you updated on this recall and further lawsuits against Daniele International.