One Mother's Heartbreaking Struggle with Foodborne Illness

Update 12/21/10: It took more than a year-and-a-half of pushing, but on December 21, 2010, Congress finally passed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510). The move came after more than 1,800 Change.org members signed our petition asking Congress to pass the food safety reform bill. You can read more about this victory here.

Robyn Allgood is a guest author for Change.org. She works as a childbirth educator and stay-at-home mother to five beautiful children. She is also a member of Safe Tables Our Priority (S.T.O.P.), which is part of the Make Our Food Safe Coalition.

Congressional lawmakers could soon send the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) to the President for his signature. If passed, it will be the first major update to the federal government’s oversight of food in more than 70 years. It will also help save countless Americans from a loss similar to what my family has known.

In September 2006, my two-year-old son, Kyle, became sick with flu-like symptoms after eating fresh spinach that I included in a fruit smoothie. Shortly after, my husband and I took him to the hospital because his illness would not subside. It was then that I began to suspect that he had eaten the E. coli-contaminated spinach that was in the news.

Within days of taking Kyle to the local hospital, he was transferred by plane to Salt Lake City, where he was seen by specialists. When I arrived by car a few hours later, he was surrounded by doctors. Kyle developed the illness hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), and as a result, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was three months shy of his third birthday.

A few weeks after Kyle’s death, it was confirmed that E. coli O157:H7 in spinach was to blame. My entire family was tested for the foodborne illness, and we all tested positive except for my then-infant daughter.

The contaminated spinach that impacted my family was not just a random occurrence, but part of a pattern of outbreaks impacting tens of millions of Americans every year.

Like many who have watched a loved one suffer from a preventable foodborne illness, my husband and I were shocked to learn that the agency charged with overseeing about 80 percent of the domestic food supply — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — inspects food-processing facilities across the nation on average only once every 10 years. Furthermore, only about one percent of U.S. food imports are inspected. In the area of inspections as well as other components of our food safety system, the laws and regulations are severely lacking and simply unsatisfactory in successfully managing what has evolved into a complex global food supply.

The legislation that may soon be sent to the president — which has the support of many Democrats and Republicans — strengthens the U.S. food safety system and shifts the FDA’s regulatory approach from reaction to prevention. It will help solve the inspection problems the nation has and will provide the FDA with the authority to mandate that food companies recall contaminated food.

The vast number of foodborne disease outbreaks in recent years that were linked to FDA-regulated products — peppers, peanut butter, cookie dough, and even spinach — highlights the desperate need to improve the agency’s regulation of the food supply. In the past 18 months, there have been more than 100 separate recalls of FDA-regulated products or ingredients that were known or suspected to carry harmful or deadly bacteria or other pathogens. Furthermore, a study authored by a former FDA economist and published earlier this year by the Produce Safety Project — an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts and Georgetown University — estimates that the total annual economic impact of foodborne illness is $682 million in Idaho and $152 billion nationally.

These days, it is rare to find bipartisan support for a major piece of legislation. Moreover, the fact that a wide range of stakeholders support S. 510 — food industry trade associations as well as consumer, public health, and victim advocacy organizations — signals that the time is ripe to really fix our nation's food safety system.

Congress needs to approve food safety legislation before the end of the year so that American families do not have to suffer the dire consequences of foodborne illness that my family knows all too well. If you support a food safety overhaul, sign Change.org's petition asking Congress to pass the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.

Photo credit: rick via Flickr