Free-Lance WriterRoss Anderson is a freelance journalist living in Port Townsend, Washington. Previously he worked 30 years at the Seattle Times, where he covered politics, natural resources and environmental issues. He was a John S. Knight Jornalism Fellow at Stanford in 1979 and has won a number of awards, including a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and several awards for his now-and-then maritime column for the Port Townsend Leader. In recent years, he has occasionally worked with food safety attorney William Marler on various writing projects.
On the morning of the Fourth of July in 1850, President Zachary Taylor strolled out of the White House and into the summer heat of Washington DC. He stopped to watch a Sunday school program, chomped on a couple of green apples, then attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the pending construction of the Washington Monument.After the ceremony, he took a...
OK, so it ain't the Louvre, and it ain't the Smithsonian. The National Outbreak Museum has no galleries, no gift store, no guides.And it most certainly has no restaurant.In fact, the Outbreak Museum, on the 7th floor of a state office building in Portland, Oregon, may be the world's smallest museum. It's big enough for about one visitor at a...
Early in December, a nurse in Roseburg, Oregon, contacted the state Public Health Division to report that two women, both in their 60s, had been sickened by toxic E. coli O157:H7. That report immediately got the attention of Dr. William Keene, Oregon's senior epidemiologist. Keene and others launched an intensive, two-week flurry of interviews and sleuthing, hoping to find the source...
Recent outbreaks linked to fresh sprouts remind us that toxic microbes can sometimes travel in small and seemingly healthful packages.The Japanese need no reminder. They learned the hard way, 15 years ago, when that health-conscious society was gripped by what may be history's worst outbreak of E. coli O157:H7. The epidemic sickened thousands, most of them children, and killed at...
A statistical study of federal and state food safety data confirms what most authorities have long believed--that some state health departments are dramatically better than others at detecting foodborne illness outbreaks.The report released Wednesday by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) uses 10 years of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess how...
Yes, the Food Safety Bill is now law. But why did it take a decade of gutaches to get it?A few weeks ago, Caroline Smith DeWaal was attending an international conference in Kenya, trying to explain American congressional politics to her European friends.As food safety director for the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, Smith DeWaal had spent...
A new year is supposed to inspire us all to ponder our future in the context of our past. In the case of foodborne illness, that takes us back some 23 centuries to the spring of 323 BC. In just a few years, Alexander the Great and his army had conquered much of the ancient world when they stopped...
Seventy-six million people Americans sick with foodborne illness, 323,000 hospitalizations, 5,200 deaths.Those grim numbers have been bandied about the Internet, the popular media, and more recently around congressional hearing rooms - like unemployment rates or major league batting averages. Public health advocates have cited them repeatedly while trying to push new food safety legislation through the House and Senate.Critics...
Two years ago, health officials were alerted to a nationwide outbreak of deadly Salmonella Typhimurium. Eventually, the source was traced by epidemiologists at the Minnesota Department of Health. Here's how they did it.In 2008, 78-year-old Clifford Tousigant reluctantly moved into an assisted care facility in Brainerd, Minnesota. A Korean War veteran with three Purple Hearts, he valued his independence. But...
Ten years ago, the picturesque farming town of Walkerton, Ontario, was plunged into a nightmare of food poisoning that sickened 2,300 residents, killed seven, and terrorized the town and its surroundings for weeks.Eventually, the horrific outbreak of E.coli O157:H7 and Campylobacter was blamed on a small herd of grass-fed cows, a poorly planned town well and water system managers who...
If you're going to come down with Salmonella or some other kind of foodborne illness, here's some advice: Do it in Minnesota.Getting sick won't be any more comfortable up there on the edge of the prairie. But chances are somebody will take notice, track down the source, and do something about it.When it comes to food safety, not all states...
Leaders of 12 environmental groups ganged up on "supersalmon" Monday, demanding that the Food and Drug Administration conduct a thorough environmental study before deciding whether to approve genetically engineered (GE) salmon for the U.S. market. "How FDA approaches this first request for approval of a GE animal for mass production and human consumption will set a precedent for future GE animal...
Just 15 years ago, outbreaks of foodborne illness were relatively small and local, often traced to undercooked meat or poultry at a neighborhood restaurant or church supper. Today, incidents such as last year's PCA peanut outbreak are regional or national, sickening hundreds of people, and are eventually traced to major food production plants or to distant farms. That dramatic transition...
A federal Food and Drug Administration panel has wrapped up its hearings on genetically modified salmon with no immediate recommendation on whether to approve the so-called "supersalmon" for distribution to American supermarkets.New York Times reporter Andrew Pollack reports that the panel "seemed to conclude" that GM salmon "would be safe to eat and for the environment." But he adds that committee...
In a nation that loves big stuff--from cars and certain body parts--you'd think people would be pretty excited about a new line of fast-growing farmed fish.And especially when the genetically modified (GM) fish pronounced safe last week by the Food and Drug Administration is being billed as cheaper to produce, therefore cheaper for the consumer.But most of the excitement that...
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