How a Broken Food-Safety System Let Contaminated Eggs Become a National Food Poisoning Epidemic. We have attached a copy of that report to this testimony for inclusion in the hearing record.
Most consumers think that the government is making sure their food is safe.
But the government watchdogs were asleep while eggs contaminated with Salmonella grew into a national public-health epidemic. The advent of that enterprising new strain of bacterium means that it is no longer safe to eat runny eggs, taste cookie dough, or enjoy raw eggs in desserts and salads. Today, infected chickens lay an estimated 2.3 million eggs each year seeded with Salmonella inside the shell, any one of which could cause an illness or an outbreak of food poisoning. While those data represent just a partial listing of outbreaks from eggs, they clearly show that the tiny bacterium has fostered a major public health problem. Since then, the fractured federal food-safety system has taken only baby steps to remedy this serious problem.