As it turned out, during the time I was writing this book I would have the opportunity to witness firsthand and in real time one of the largest foodborne illness outbreaks and subsequent food recalls in the history of humankind. The drama began to unfold on August 13, 2010, when Wright County Egg initiated a voluntary nationwide recall of shell eggs due to Salmonella Enteritidis contamination at three of its five farms. Within a week, the recall would twice be expanded to include eggs from a second producer that shared suppliers with Wright County Egg. Soon the total number of eggs recalled exceeded more than a half billion (yes, half a billion) being sold under no fewer than 16 brand names. That’s 550 million eggs, 16 brands, 14 US states, and 1,800 people sickened. From two suppliers. If those numbers don’t tell a tale of an industry run amuck, I’m not sure what does.
Over the past 2 decades, Salmonella Enteritidis has become the single most common cause of foodborne illness in the United States. It is one of the three strains of Salmonella enterica that account for nearly half the deaths by foodborne pathogenic bacteria in this country: Salmonella Typhi, Salmonella Typhimurium, and Salmonella Enteritidis. S. Typhi is the bacterium that causes typhoid fever; it is typically spread by contaminated water (although food that’s been washed in contaminated water can also be a vector). Owing to the generally high quality of North America’s water supply, S. Typhi is not very common.
Next up is S. Typhimurium, which in mice causes a typhoidlike disease. In humans, it does not cause as severe a reaction as S. Typhi, and it is not normally fatal, although the severe diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and vomiting that accompany it are not anybody’s idea of a picnic. And in people with compromised or undeveloped immune systems (the young, elderly, or those fighting other serious conditions, such as cancer), S. Typhimurium can be a death sentence, particularly if it’s not quickly identified and treated with antibiotics.
Which brings us to the culprit of the big egg outbreak of 2010, S. Enteritidis, which inflicts symptoms that are for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from S. Typhimurium. (At a DNA level, the three strains of S. enterica are 95 to 99 percent identical and, it surprised me to learn, share about 65 percent of their DNA with E. coli.) The thing about S. Enteritidis is that it is extremely prevalent in chicken flocks, where it can thrive and spread undetected. Indeed, many people believe that the rise of S. Enteritidis in the United States has everything to do with the consolidation of the chicken industry (both for eggs and meat) over the past few decades. It is estimated that S. Enteritidis causes as many as 140,000 human illnesses annually.
The moment I heard about the egg recall, I couldn’t help thinking of Bill Marler (much to my regret, I also couldn’t quite shake the image—and the sound—of Aajonus Vonderplanitz slurping a raw egg from its shell). I imagined Marler in his glass-walled office high in the Seattle skyline, passing the handful of minutes between phone calls from claimants and reporters, and coming up with withering quips aimed at the egg industry and our regulatory agencies. Turns out, I wasn’t too far off: On August 17, only 4 days after the recall was announced, Marler Clark announced that it had filed its first lawsuit associated with the outbreak. And on August 23, CNBC included this Marlerism in its “quotations of the day”: “The history of ignoring the law makes the sickening of 1,300 and the forced recall of 550 million eggs shockingly understandable. You have to wonder where the USDA and FDA inspectors were.” I had to smile; the quip was classic Marler, and it appeared between quotes from General Ray Odierno and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I could only imagine how much Marler would like that.
To be honest, I hadn’t paid much attention during the early days of the outbreak; part of this was simply because, like most Americans, I’d become accustomed to news of foodborne illness and, therefore, somewhat inured to its impact. It was like hearing about yet another traffic accident on the nightly news: Oh, another outbreak. That’s too bad. Part of it was because, like Bill Marler, I knew something about the legal, regulatory, and sanitary conditions surrounding our modern food industry and the ways in which they conjoin to all but ensure that such outbreaks are, as Marler himself put it, “shockingly understandable.” And part of it, I’ll admit, was because we keep a small flock of laying hens on our Vermont farm. I hadn’t bought a grocery store egg in at least a decade, and I sure as heck wasn’t about to begin now.
But as the outbreak grew, I began to focus my attention. And as I focused, I began to realize that the egg-related salmonella outbreak of August 2010 was an almost perfect summation of the risks inherent to our consolidated, corporatized food system, a system that has become so entrenched and pervasive that such incidents hardly raise eyebrows among anyone familiar with the way the business of our nourishment is conducted.
Wright County Egg is located in Galt, Iowa, a north-central Iowa town with a population of just 30 (no, I am not forgetting any zeros). This means that there are approximately 14,999,970 more chickens than people residing in Galt, which seems like a perilous imbalance: I mean, chickens are pretty docile creatures, but if ever they got in the mood to revolt, the good people of Galt would have a hell of a fight on their hands.
The business is owned by Austin “Jack” DeCoster, who also owns Quality Egg, the company that supplies young chickens (known as pullets) and feed to both Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms. That’s pretty much par for the course, as most of the large-scale egg and meat production in modern agriculture operates under the “vertical integration” model. Vertical integration is just a fancy way of saying that a common owner controls numerous businesses necessary to complete a particular supply chain: the feed that feeds the layers, the chicks that become laying hens, the laying hens and the eggs they supply. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If anyone knows, it’s Jack DeCoster, because his hands are in every piece of the process; it all falls under his purview.
As the outbreak dragged on and various media outlets began digging, it became clear that Jack DeCoster knows a few other things, too. In particular, he knows how to pay fines and settlements, including $3.6 million to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1996, for violations in the workplace and at workers’ housing (then–Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich publicly denounced DeCoster’s practices as “morally repugnant” and “among the worst we found around the country.” At the time, DeCoster’s egg empire was located in rural Maine.
Even as he was being fined for these abuses, DeCoster was expanding his empire into Iowa, where he established a sprawling hog business that included a half-dozen facilities scattered throughout north-central Iowa. Like most industrial-scale livestock producers, DeCoster wisely chooses to locate his businesses far beyond the watchful eyes, sensitive noses, and political sway of urban population centers. Almost immediately, he was fined $59,000 for numerous water pollution and animal waste control violations. Shortly thereafter, the Iowa attorney general came knocking, bestowing upon DeCoster the dubious distinction of being the state’s first habitual offender of water quality laws. That title cost him $150,000. Then in 2002, Wright County Eggs paid $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by five illegal Mexican immigrants who claimed they were raped by supervisors who threatened to have them fired or killed if they didn’t submit to their advances.
Of course, one could argue that none of this speaks directly to the issue of salmonella in eggs or that this pattern of behavior—however distasteful—is not confined to our food industry. Both arguments are strictly true, but DeCoster’s sordid history tells a larger truth about the practice of agriculture in 21st-century America, and it is this: There is a sad lack of reverence in the business of the most life-giving commerce we know. One would like to think that the production of food would carry with it a sense of responsibility to conduct oneself and one’s business in a manner befitting the critical importance of the end product, and that this ethos would resonate throughout the industry. But one would be wrong, and the reason for this is that we have come to view food as simply another fungible commodity. An egg is an egg is an egg, which isn’t really even an egg, but rather a nutritional unit to be plugged into an engineered dietary formulation. Which will probably be changed next year, according to the latest fad or study refuting its validity. Given this coldly calculating view of our nourishment, is it any surprise that we’ve come to treat our food as little more than an economic sector, in which success or failure relates more to food’s ability to feed our economy than to nourish our bodies and minds.
The 2010 egg outbreak was also notable for the technology that was used to track it: pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). In fact, the CDC had been on alert since May, when the agency noticed a marked uptick in the number of Salmonella Enteritidis isolates with PFGE pattern JEGX01.0004 (the bacterium’s DNA fingerprint) being uploaded to the PulseNet database. Between May 1 and July 31, a total of 1,953 illnesses were reported; this was nearly three times what the CDC considers “normal” for the time frame (typically, there would have been about 700 salmonella cases reported). Of course, not all of these illnesses were egg related, but it was clear to the government that something big was brewing.
This is, in essence, how modern foodborne-illness investigations are conducted in the early years of the 21st century, and it is in many regards a textbook example of an investigation done right: Technology was utilized to identify an outbreak and focus the investigation, and epidemiologists were deployed to pinpoint the guilty food and where that food originated. The producer recalled the offending food, and the public was alerted to avoid eggs from these suppliers.
Except: Why did it take almost 4 months between the first spike on PulseNet and the initial recall? The CDC’s own data show a clear rise beginning in the middle of April; it’s not terribly dramatic, but it’s there. Given the modest nature of the initial rise in cases, it seems reasonable that they would wait a week or two for confirmation. After all, perhaps the increase was simple coincidental; maybe the number of cases would fall to historical norms over the next few weeks.
It didn’t. Instead, it spiked dramatically in the final week of April and first weeks of May. Any hope that this might be simply a bad month or a statistical aberration was blown right out of the water. Studying the chart released by the CDC, it seems painfully clear that something was amiss as early as the first of May. Which means it took 3½ months from the time the CDC had to have known there was a problem to the initial recall of eggs on August 13. I don’t know about you, but in my view this is not the sort of time gap that engenders confidence.
If the CDC and FDA truly need the better part of 100 days to make a connection between a spike in illnesses relating to a common foodborne pathogen and the actual food associated with the outbreak, might we be looking at a more systemic problem? Could it be that a supply chain in which two producers sell eggs under more than a dozen brands in numerous states throughout the United States is inherently unsafe? Consider: During the 100 days it took epidemiologists to trace the pathogen to its source, using the latest gee-whiz technology and the full resources of two of our nation’s largest, best-funded agencies, more than 1,000 people got sick.
Still, I couldn’t understand why it had taken so long to find the source of the outbreak. I was suspicious that perhaps the CDC and FDA had known exactly where the salmonella was coming from for days, if not weeks, prior to the initial recall. Remember: These agencies don’t have the authority to shut down a facility or even force a recall. All they can do is alert a producer to a problem and suggest a response.
So I called Marler, whose 15 minutes of fame had stretched to at least 3 weeks and included an appearance on Larry King Live as well as daily news programs on CNN and MSNBC. He’d been withering in his criticism of both the producers and the government.
Maybe he was simply feeling mellow, or perhaps his run of media appearances had worn him out (“I think people are getting overwhelmed by Marler on TV, and I can’t blame them,” he told me), but Marler was more circumspect and empathetic toward the federal agencies than I’d expected. “You’ve got the local health guys saying, ‘Don’t blame me, blame the state.’ And the state says, ‘Don’t blame me, blame the CDC.’ And the CDC says, ‘We can’t do anything if we don’t have good information from the local guys.’ ”
What about my theory—which, to be fair, wasn’t strictly mine; I’d seen it posited by numerous observers—that the contamination source point had been known for some time and the recall had been delayed by ongoing negotiations over the response? Almost certainly not true, Marler told me. “My guess is that probably around the 10th of August, the CDC felt it had enough data to call Wright County Egg and say, ‘You guys have a big f’ing problem.’ This whole issue of mandatory recall is a red herring.” For one thing, he explained, there’s not much practical difference between the government asking for a recall and mandating a recall; to say “no” would invite an uncomfortable level of scrutiny and pressure. Also, the negative publicity generated by refusing to recall a product linked to hundreds, if not thousands, of illnesses would likely be a producer’s death knell. Better to absorb the temporary, if severe, economic pain doled out by a recall and carry on.
The reason for the long lag between the observed spike in salmonella cases and the recall, explained Marler, isn’t one of “mal-intent” or simple laziness. No, it’s more systemic than that, a result of our nation’s disjointed efforts when it comes to recognizing and tracking outbreaks of foodborne illness and their source points. He trotted out his funnel analogy again (by this point I’d heard it at least three times, but it still struck me as apt): Because the CDC can only know about the cases that emerge from the narrow end of the funnel, and because so much occurs inside the funnel to obfuscate the situation, and because the narrow and fat ends of the funnel are often separated by thousands of miles, it can take quite a while to determine where any particular outbreak originated.
I’d assumed that Marler would be inundated with calls from claimants and wannabe claimants who had become ill (or believed they had become ill) by eating contaminated eggs. But as it turns out, the phones had been relatively quiet, and Marler was pretty sure he knew why. “When outbreaks take several months to figure out, stuff falls through the cracks.” Remember, the first spike in salmonella cases happened in late April and early May, but it wasn’t until the middle of August that these incidents could be connected to a particular food and producer. In other words, nearly 4 months passed between the first cases and the identification of a defendant on which to lay blame. Salmonella Enteritidis isn’t a particularly pleasant affliction. (Hint: You’ll get real familiar with the business end of your bathroom.) But it’s rarely serious and even more rarely fatal. In other words, people get sick from it, recover, and move on. Even in litigation-happy America, suing over a tummy ache hasn’t become standard practice.
There are two ways to view the story of the great egg outbreak of 2010: as the story of a pathogen and the effort to halt its spread. Or as the story of an industry that, like virtually every segment of our food system, prizes scale and efficiency above all else, because scale and efficiency equal profit, even as they drive the price of our nourishment to historic lows. The business of producing eggs in this country has changed—and changed recently and rapidly—in ways that are mirrored throughout the food industry. According to Iowa State University’s Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, in 1987 there were 2,500 egg producers with at least 75,000 hens. Today, the number of producers operating on such a scale has dropped to 205, and that’s not because over the past 25 years thousands of small-scale producers have entered the market. Rather, it’s exactly the opposite: The biggest egg farms have gotten exponentially bigger, and in 2010, the 205 largest farms produce 95 percent of the eggs that make their way to American tables.
What is the reward for such consolidation? If you are Jack DeCoster, it is measured in growth and profit; if you’re an egg consumer, it is the low price attached to each of those fragile, oblong orbs, which as of January 2010 averaged less than 12 cents apiece. At first blush, this arrangement sounds okay: Let DeCoster have his profit; give us our cheap eggs. Except we get something more than cheap eggs: We get a system that’s capable of spreading pathogenic bacteria just as easily as it spreads 12-penny eggs.
Something else strikes me about the great egg outbreak of 2010, and it is the absolute clarity with which the situation illustrates our government’s priorities when “protecting” us from our food. On June 30, 2010, even as national salmonella cases were spiking more than 400 percent higher than normal, California state agents were raiding the warehouse at Rawsome with their guns drawn. How many cases of illness were associated with the Rawsome food-buying club? Well, none actually. Not one, not two or even three. Certainly not 1,800, which would be the final tally of illness linked to the egg outbreak.
On one hand, we have one of the largest foodborne-illness outbreaks in the United States, perpetrated by a consolidated industry that can’t even be legally compelled to recall its product in the face of irrefutable evidence of contamination. We have a company run by a man with numerous violations in his recent history, Iowa’s first “habitual offender,” but who is nonetheless allowed to continue expanding his agricultural enterprise. We have an industry that, like most food-based industries, conducts its business entirely out of sight of its customers; as of July 2010, it is actually illegal for egg farms with more than 3,000 hens to allow the public into the chicken houses. The stated reason for this is that visitors can carry pathogenic bacteria on their clothing or shoes, which is almost funny, given what the FDA found in the laying houses at Wright County Egg: piles of chicken manure as high as 8 feet; rodents and wild birds, both common vectors of pathogenic bacteria; and dead flies “too numerous to count.”
On the other hand, we have a buying club of approximately 1,600 members who willingly consume foods the FDA and USDA believe to be dangerous. We have an establishment that sources its foods from farmers who welcome visits by those who consume their products. We have no reported illness. We have consumers who trust their food and are willing to pay a premium for it precisely because they feel as if they can trust it.
I am not making claims about the safety and health benefits of raw foods; I’ll leave that to Mark McAfee and Aajonus Vonderplanitz. I am only pointing out the absurdity of our nation’s food-safety-related laws and regulations. When an outfit like Rawsome, with zero history of foodborne illness and the willing participation of its members, can be shut down by gun-toting agents, while businesses like Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms can’t even be legally compelled to cease operations after they make 1,800 people ill and force the recall of more than half a billion eggs, there can be little doubt where our government’s priorities lie.
We have learned (or been taught) to consider the issue of food safety only in the context of a system that is inherently unsafe, that wields both economic might and political power. Part of this, I think, is that we have only begun to think seriously about food safety in the past few decades, a time frame that is concurrent with the rise of industrial agriculture and food corporatism and concurrent with a sense that we are utterly beholden to this system. And to a certain extent, we are: Most of us have become displaced from the land and disconnected from the source of our nourishment.
And yet we must eat. So we place a shaky trust in the producers who time and again betray us and in a government that seems powerless to truly protect us. Outbreak after outbreak, we return to the same supermarkets to buy the same food from the same system that has proven itself incapable of cleaning up its act and that is feeding us products that, if they don’t make us acutely ill, sicken us over the course of years and decades. Because we think we have no choice.
Given this sense of helplessness, is it any wonder that our collective responses to the inherent vulnerabilities of such a system are in large part framed by the system itself? We seem unable to consider another way, even as it becomes more obvious that we must. We barely question the wisdom of having two producers supplying the eggs for 16 brands in nearly half the United States. We don’t pause to wonder if perhaps an inexpensive egg is also a cheap egg, or how the ways in which our desire for ever-cheaper food butts up against the need for food corporations to make money. This is not to absolve Wright County Egg or Hillandale Farms of their egregious violations, but it is a fact that the current model of food production in this country lacks both transparency and accountability, even as it seeks to profit in an industry with notoriously tight margins. Of course corners will be cut; thus it has always been, thus it always will be.
By comparing the Rawsome raid to the egg recall, I’m not trying to make a claim about a specific food and its relative safety. Oh sure, I have my opinions, and given the choice, I’ll take my chances with the illegal goods at Rawsome rather than risk my well-being by eating an egg from a so-called “farm” where the chickens live in cages amid piles of excrement and in the company of rodents.
But that’s not the point. Or rather, it’s not the point I’m trying to make right now. Rather, what I hope this comparison makes clear is the ways in which our government’s response to outbreaks of foodborne illness is built on faulty assumptions. First, there is an assumption that consumers should not be allowed or do not care to view how their food is raised. Second, there is an assumption that certain foods—such as the ones available at Rawsome—are more dangerous or at least more deserving of heavy-handed oversight than the eggs emerging from a 15-million-hen “farm.” Third, there is the assumption that the level of consolidation from which a half-billion-egg recall arises is a healthy business model. Perhaps most alarmingly, there is an assumption that individuals should not have the right to make informed choices about the food they consume.
Is it ironic that all of these assumptions and the responses to them merely propagate the systemic weaknesses of our food system? Is it ironic that in a country where tobacco is sold in every corner store and the right to bear arms is written into the constitution, we have no right to specific foods? The people who eat from Rawsome want that food. None of them are complaining about foodborne illness. The farms that supply the store are small in scale and located in the region; if there were an outbreak, it would affect relatively few people and be relatively easy to trace to its source. Having not visited them, I can’t comment on the actual practices of these farms, but given the legal framework of the business, in which the consumers are leasing the properties, it’s unlikely they would be denied access to the source of their food should they seek it out. In other words, there is built-in transparency. There is built-in accountability. As Bill Marler quipped when I visited him in Seattle: “Just because you can shake the hand of the farmer who sold you your dinner doesn’t mean he’s not going to poison you. But it does mean you’ll know where to find him if he does.”
Yet the regulatory landscape in this country places a business like Rawsome directly in the crosshairs of our agriculture and food-related agencies, even as it enables a business like Wright County Egg to operate with a past and present of flagrant violations. Even as it allows the food system in our nation to spiral further out of control, consolidating both the power and practice of agriculture and production, all but ensuring that outbreaks of foodborne illness will only increase in scope and frequency. Even as the final frayed strands of our trust and health are broken.