Tainted Pork, Ill Consumers and an Investigation Thwarted
Source: New York Times
DEADLY GERMS, LOST CURES
Tainted Pork, Ill Consumers and an Investigation Thwarted
Drug-resistant infections from food are growing. But powerful industry interests are blocking scientists and investigators from getting information they need to combat the problem.
By Matt Richtel
Aug. 4, 2019
It was 7 a.m. on Independence Day when a doctor told Rose and Roger Porter Jr. that their daughter could die within hours. For nearly a week, Mikayla, 10, had suffered intensifying bouts of fever, diarrhea and stabbing stomach pains.
That morning, the Porters rushed her to a clinic where a doctor called for a helicopter to airlift her to a major medical center.
The gravity of the girl’s illness was remarkable given its commonplace source. She had gotten food poisoning at a pig roast from meat her parents had bought at a local butcher in McKenna, Wash., and spit-roasted, as recommended, for 13 hours.
Mikayla was one of nearly 200 people reported ill in the summer of 2015 in Washington State from tainted pork — victims of the fastest-growing salmonella variant in the United States, a strain that is particularly dangerous because it is resistant to antibiotics.
What followed was an exhaustive detective hunt by public health authorities that was crippled by weak, loophole-ridden laws and regulations — and ultimately blocked by farm owners who would not let investigators onto their property and by their politically powerful allies in the pork industry.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/health/pork-antibiotic-resistance-salmonella.html
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