Exactly 24 years ago today my 16-month-old son Riley died from E.coli/HUS during the 1993 “Jack in the Box” outbreak. He was the last of the four young children who paid the ultimate price for failures in food safety protocols at that time.
The landmark outbreak is often referred to as the 9/11 of the…
The third-annual Food Safety and Analysis Congress, held earlier this week at Cripps Court Auditorium on the beautiful campus of the University of Cambridge in England, brought together leaders from industry and academia to discuss the latest on foodborne illness surveillance and food fraud. I traveled to the event to serve as one of…
Kenneth Kendrick, missing Monday from the federal courthouse in Albany, GA, did not hear the praise that came from a witness during a pivotal day in the world of food safety. Kendrick is a former assistant plant manager of the Plainview, Texas, peanut processing facility once owned by the now-defunct Peanut Corporation of America (PCA).…
Audiences at my lectures are often surprised that, after the death of my 16-month-old son, Riley, during the 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak, no state or federal agency filed criminal charges against anyone involved in that easily-preventable tragedy. For the past 22 years since Riley’s death, I viewed the American justice system…
Michael Parnell’s defense attorney is painting his client as a “little guy” who “lost it all.” I would dare Parnell and his defense team, and the other convicted former Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) executives, to stand before the families of the nine people who died as a result of their actions and try to…
Mike Taylor, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Deputy Commissioner for Foods, stated in his address before the 2015 Food Safety Summit that, “If we were starting from scratch, [America’s food safety system] would look different.” 
Under Taylor’s leadership, FDA’s implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) envisions an “integrated food safety system” to…
