High costs of failures in U.S. food safety simply cannot be ignored
While regular folks may tolerate the occasional sickness that follows a catered company event, church potluck, or dining on take-out or sit-down meals from all manner of meal providers, all-too-common food-borne illnesses must get greater attention from public health officials because of the major but less publicized damage that tainted foods can cause.
Consider what happened family and friends who attended a funeral reception in Texas that included store-bought chicken (rotisserie and fried) and potato salad. As ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative site reported, hours after the event, “dozens of the attendees were stricken by illness, overcome by nausea, cramping, vomiting and diarrhea, according to an investigation by Austin Public Health, which found that at least 61 people reported symptoms of food poisoning.”
The situation worsened and stayed bad, ProPublica found, reporting in its follow-up: