The inquiry was silent on the central problems of temperature-controlled storage, the underfunding of the environmental health departments and the lack of public accountability of these services. Like an earlier inquiry led by Professor Pennington, it did not address how the meat had become infected in the first place and how the disease might be eradicated. It did not examine the source of the E.coli infection, the transmission agent, the infectivity of animal feeds, the practices of the livestock, slaughtering and food industries or the regulation of the meat industry. That is of much greater concern to the authorities than the lives and health of consumers. There are hundreds of cases of E.coli every year and a fivefold increase in reported food poisoning in England and Wales between 1980 and 1994.
Food poisoning is on the increase all over the world.
Just 12 months ago, the US Department of Agriculture warned that as many as five million hamburgers could be contaminated with the E.coli bacteria. While it named the factory that had supplied them, it did not name the fast-food restaurants that purchased most of the hamburgers, in order to protect their business. The source of E.coli 0157 is in the infected guts of livestock. If these are allowed to fall onto meat during processing at the abattoirs, the contamination may infect humans. It was known well before this tragedy occurred that E.coli 0157 is a serious and growing problem.