we did it together E. coli On hamburgers. The sky did not fall. This is why we need to do this again and get it done.
I have spent over 30 years suing food companies on behalf of people who became sick and died from contaminated food. I began representing Brianne Kiner, the most seriously injured survivor of Jack in the Box, in 1993. E. coli The O157:H7 outbreak changed food safety in the United States forever. The disaster left four children dead and hundreds hospitalized. It also set a precedent that ultimately saved tens of thousands of lives. In 1994, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) took a bold step. E. coli O157:H7 Adulteration of raw ground beef (1). Zero tolerance. no E. coli On hamburgers. period.
The meat industry cried out. They said the sky would fall, beef prices would skyrocket, and the rule would be legally indefensible and virtually impossible. That didn’t happen. From 1993 to 2002, about 95% of my law firm’s revenue came from E. coli Incident involving hamburgers. Today it’s close to zero. The adultery designation worked. Science, law, and industrial ingenuity have come together to make burgers safer. This is one of the true success stories of American food safety regulations.
The numbers are huge and still not moving.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates: salmonella It causes approximately 1.35 million illnesses, 26,500 hospitalizations, and 420 deaths in the United States each year. More than 23% of these diseases are caused by consumption of poultry, and nearly 17% occur in chicken alone. Chicken is currently the only major source. salmonella America’s disease. And the salmonellosis incidence rate (about 15.3 cases per 100,000 people) is well above the CDC’s Healthy People 2030 goal of 11.5 cases per 100,000 people. We have made no real progress in the last 20 years. 20 years.
Think about it.
In 1994, FSIS declared: E. coli O157:H7 is impure and has bent the curve of food poisoning. Today, despite decades of performance standards, HACCP requirements, and industry commitments, salmonella In Chicken, we continue to hospitalize and kill Americans at rates that would be completely unacceptable under any other circumstances. There is no zero tolerance standard. There is no impurity designation for serotypes. salmonella It is the one that causes the greatest harm. In poultry processing plants, up to 24% of ground chicken may test positive. salmonella Still following federal standards. In what world is that allowed?
Petition: Next E. coli playbook
On January 19, 2020, Marler Clark filed a formal petition with USDA-FSIS on behalf of Rick Schiller, Steven Romes, the Porter family, Food & Water Watch, Consumer Federation of America, and Consumer Reports. The petition asked FSIS to declare 31. salmonella Serovars, especially outbreak serotypes for which scientific data and epidemiology continue to link illness, hospitalization, recall, and death, are themselves adulterants of meat and poultry products.
These serotypes include: salmonella Enteritidis, Typhimurium, Newport, Heidelberg, Infantis, Javiana and 25 others have been recorded causing harm to people. Each item has a verifiable history of food poisoning outbreaks or product recalls. Each has been proven to be harmful to human health.
We are not asking FSIS to enact new law. We asked FSIS to do exactly what. E. coli In 1994 — and again in 2012, after the company’s petition — the “Big Six” expanded impurity designations to include non-O157 Shiga toxin-producing E. coli strains.
The legal framework is clear and has been recognized by the courts. The Federal Meat Inspection Act grants FSIS the authority to declare adulterated materials through the writing of interpretive rules. Writing notice and comment rules is not required. A U.S. district court upheld this very mandate when the beef industry sued in 1994. E. coli O157:H7 declaration. USDA won the case. Permission exists. You just have to use it.
that E. coli Precedents: Effective Blueprints
that E. coli Stories are the best arguments for declarations salmonella That comes from my career. For over 30 years, I have watched what happens when governments take pathogens seriously enough to call them impurities. It happens in stages and it works.
In 1994, then-FSIS Administrator Michael Taylor had the courage to say that ground beef was contaminated. E. coliO157:H7 is adulterated under the Federal Meat Inspection Act. The industry filed a lawsuit and lost. A testing program followed. The HACCP system has been completely overhauled. Cooking temperatures have been revised for restaurants and consumers. Interventions at slaughter have been developed. Over time, the entire system was reoriented around the goal of keeping O157:H7 out of burgers. Until the mid-2000s, major E. coli Outbreaks associated with ground beef have become rare.
Then, in 2009, Marler Clark petitioned FSIS again. This time, the request was to expand the impurity designation to Shiga toxin-producing substances other than O157. E. coli strain. Non-O157 STEC was causing more illnesses than O157:H7 itself, and FSIS was doing nothing about it. We filed papers and documented the science on behalf of three seriously injured victims. FSIS resisted for years. Then in 2012, they declared six additional non-O157 variants as adulterated: O26, O45, O103, O111, O121 and O145. The same industry warnings of economic disaster followed. And the same thing happened. Systems adapted, disease declined, and the sky did not fall.
Impure designation is not a magic wand. It does not eliminate pathogens immediately. What this does is force the industry to treat pathogens as things they shouldn’t be in the end product, rather than managing and tolerating them at acceptable levels of contamination. A frame shift from “how much” to “how much” leads to real reductions in disease.
The chicken industry’s argument has been recycled and has already been defeated.
The National Chicken Council and its allies raised the same objection to the declaration: salmonella Adulteration raised by the beef industry E. coli I have heard these arguments in regulatory comments, press statements, and court arguments. Let me deal with it myself.
they say salmonella Because it occurs naturally in chickens, it cannot be an “added substance” under the FMIA. However, FMIA has two impurity standards: one for added substances and one for naturally occurring substances. Naturally occurring standards ask whether the levels of substances found generally make a product unhealthy. when salmonella If present in sufficient quantities to cause illness under normal handling and preparation conditions, the answer is yes. The USDA itself has repeatedly rejected the inheritance claims and has won its own court victories in lawsuits. E. coli The context is built on this very analysis.
Consumers say they just need to cook the chicken properly. But we already know that this approach has failed. Raw chicken products (such as Chicken Kiev and Chicken Cordon Bleu), which FSIS finally breaded in 2022 and 2023, have been linked to 14 outbreaks and about 200 illnesses since 1998, despite decades of improved labeling and public education campaigns. Telling people to cook their food more carefully is not food safety policy. Doing nothing is an excuse.
They say economics is incredibly difficult. He said that in 1994 as well. As USDA Undersecretary for Food Safety Sandra Eskin points out, salmonella Today’s adultery designation “is exactly the same language used in 1994 when FSIS declared O157 an adulterer.” The sky was about to fall. Meat prices were about to skyrocket. Nothing happened. The National Chicken Association does not exist to protect public health. It exists to protect the poultry industry. Those are different missions.
Baby steps are not enough
I was delighted when FSIS proposed a declaration in August 2022. salmonella A final decision was made in April 2024 after adulteration of breaded raw chicken products. At the time I said: It’s a baby step, but it’s a step. I meant it. After years of inactivity, movement is important.
And the current government killed it.
But even otherwise, breaded and stuffed chicken products make up a very small portion of the chicken Americans eat. They account for a small portion of the $1.35 million annually. salmonella disease.
The FSIS petition submitted in January 2020 was not a request for perfection. These were carefully documented serotype-specific requests based on outbreak data and legal precedent. It was named 31 salmonella Serotype. FSIS stated three things in response: The FDA did not consider the merits of the other 28 serotypes and provided a “laundry list of reasons for not regulating them,” according to a follow-up filing. That’s not a response. That’s a delay.
five salmonella Serotypes alone account for 60% of illnesses associated with USDA-regulated products, according to FSIS’s own data. 5 serotypes. 60 percent of the damage. And FSIS has not declared a single one of them to be adulterated in raw chicken.
The face hidden behind the numbers
I don’t sue for abstractions. I represent the people. People like Amanda Craten, whose 18-month-old son was left seriously injured and permanently disabled after eating a meal. salmonella– Contaminated chicken. Like Rick Schiller, Steven Romes and the Porter family, these are the petitioners who put their names on the 2020 FSIS filing because they believe no one else should have to go through what they went through.
When I sued Jack in the Box on behalf of Brianne Kiner in 1993, food safety wasn’t a concept most Americans associated with fast food burgers. It is now. That change has occurred because governments, industry, advocates and lawyers have forced us to calculate what’s in our food. The same calculations are needed for chicken. salmonella. It’s long overdue.
The question is simple
FSIS has the statutory authority to declare illnesses related to outbreaks. salmonella There is currently a serotype impurity in the chicken. No new legislation is needed. It does not require years of additional research. The science is there. There are dynamics. Here is the legal precedent upheld by FSIS in federal court in 2012.
Anything that can poison or kill a person salmonella From chicken you need to adulterate. FSIS has the authority. You just have to use it.
that E. coli The story proves that the model works. that salmonella The story proves that nothing changes without it. Every year, 1.5 million Americans get sick. Four hundred and twenty people die.
That number hasn’t moved in 20 years.
Get S*%! From chicken. FSIS — Gets the job done.
Bill Marler is the head of Marler Clark, Inc., a leading food safety law firm in the United States. I am the managing partner of PS. He began litigating food poisoning cases in 1993, representing Brianne Kiner, the most seriously injured survivor of Jack in the Box. E. coli O157:H7 outbreak. Marler Clark filed a petition with USDA-FSIS to declare STEC, not O157, as an adulterer (approved in 2009, 2012) and 31. salmonella Occurrence of serotypes as impurities in meat and poultry (rejected without prejudice, January 19, 2020). Marler is also the publisher of Food Safety News.
(1) The Federal Meat Inspection Act’s (FMIA) definition of “adulterity” is broad and includes hazardous substances, unsanitary conditions, diseased animals, and inappropriate additives or packaging.
