An Egg Farmer and a History of Salmonella

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

On a July night in 1987, scores of elderly and chronically ill patients at Bird S. Coler Memorial Hospital in New York City began to fall violently sick with food poisoning from eggs tainted with salmonella.

“It was like a war zone,” said Dr. Philippe Tassy, the doctor on call as the sickness started to rage through the hospital. By the time the outbreak ended more than two weeks later, nine people had died and about 500 people had become sick. It remains the deadliest outbreak in this country attributed to eggs infected with the bacteria known as Salmonella enteritidis.

This year, the same bacteria sickened thousands of people nationwide and led to the recall of half a billion eggs.

Despite the gap of decades, there is a crucial link between the two outbreaks: in both cases, the eggs came from farms owned by Austin J. DeCoster, one of the country’s biggest egg producers.

Mr. DeCoster’s frequent run-ins with regulators over labor, environmental and immigration violations have been well cataloged. But the close connections between Mr. DeCoster’s egg empire and the spread of salmonella in the United States have received far less scrutiny.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/business/22eggs.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[Codeine]

1. When will people realize

nothing that comes from industrial-sized animal factories can be considered healthy or safe? Those places are utterly bizarre and inhuman.

[MajorChode]

5. You can have the same types of problems at smaller scale farms

It's actually cheaper to regular larger farms because instead of thousands of smaller operations, you have fewer larger ones. The problem is you have too many states and too many in the federal government with a Ronnie Raygun attitude that all government regulation is bad. This is a problem that can and should have been controlled decades ago.

[lonestarnot]

2. K & R!

[Stargazer09]

3. Sickening

Doesn't the man feel ANY guilt over killing people?

[OffWithTheirHeads]

4. Fuck no! Profit is all that counts

If you kill people but make a profit you win! That's the "free market" at work. Nice huh? Vote Republican for more of the same or stay home this election, also for more of the same.