Foster Farms
chicken was sickening consumers with salmonella food poisoning for years before
a huge outbreak finally shut the California plant down.
According to
the Oregonian newspaper, state officials in Oregon and Washington had linked
salmonella illnesses to Foster Farms chicken as early as 2004.
There were
more sick people in 2009 and 2012.
Oregon and
Washington public health officials repeatedly told the United States Department of Agriculture about the salmonella.
"State
officials pushed federal regulators to act, but salmonella-tainted chicken
flowed into grocery stores, first in the Northwest, then across the country.
“Oregon
investigators became so familiar with the culprit they gave it a name: the
Foster Farms strain,” reports the newspaper.
In 2012,
illnesses spread to almost a dozen states. The next year, a new outbreak
emerged that sickened more than 600 people across the country.
“Much has
been written about that last 16-month ordeal and the USDA’s slow response. But
the way the federal agency handled it was not an isolated case,” writes
reporter Lynne Terry.
“Time after
time dating to 2004, Oregon and Washington officials alerted the USDA’s food
safety agency about salmonella illnesses, but the federal government chose not
to warn the public or ask Foster Farms for a recall,” writes Terry.
Foster Farms
has since cleaned up its act and now has the lowest incidence of salmonella –
less than two per cent – among large-volume chicken-processing plants in the
U.S.
Its cleanup
included on-farm measures.
I think something similar could happen in Canada. Not the cleanup, but the marketing of salmonella-tainted chicken.
