(Thanks to Bill Marler - the man who SHOULD be our next USDA Under Secretary For Food Safety - for this! - promoted by Jill Richardson)
I began my career as a food safety attorney because Lauren Beth Rudolph died on December 28, 1992 in her mother's arms, due to complications of an E. coli O157:H7 infection - Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. She was only 6 years, 10 months, and 10 days old when she died. Her death, the deaths of three other children, and the sicknesses of 600 others, were eventually linked to E. coli O157:H7 tainted hamburger produced by Von's and served at Jack in the Box restaurants on the West Coast during late 1992 and January 1993. I met Roni Rudolph, Lauren's mom, when I litigated the case against Jack in the Box. We've been friends in the ensuing sixteen years. |
| On Tuesday, I spent time with a family in South Carolina whose 4-year-old ate tainted Nestlé Toll House cookie dough and suffered months of hospitalizations, weeks of dialysis and seizures. She faces a lifetime of complications. And, there is a woman in Nevada who is still hospitalized, who has lost a portion of her large intestine, and was on dialysis until a few days ago. She faces months, if not years of rehabilitation. The cookie dough both ate was watched over by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's FDA.
On Wednesday, I sat across the kitchen table with a family who lost their only daughter because she died from an E. coli O157:H7 infection from meat inspected by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. I then visited families in a Cleveland hospital whose children are struggling in their battle against Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome - again E. coli O157:H7 tainted hamburger is to blame.
Dave Theno became head of Jack in the Box's food safety shortly after the E coli outbreak that caused Lauren's death. I have known Dave for sixteen years, too. However, I only learned recently a significant fact about Dave, one that made me admire him even more, and one that I think that not only that all leaders in corporate food safety should emulate, but one that both Secretary Vilsack and Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius should pay attention to, too. Together, they're in charge of the Food Safety Working Group, and they oversee food safety for all of America. Michael Taylor, their newly appointed special advisor, should take note, as well.
Dave and I shared the stage at the Nation Meat Association annual convention a few months ago. The NMA is a lobbying association representing meat processors, suppliers, and exporters. We were both there to discuss food safety initiatives with the people who produce the meat for America--and for much of the world. Dave spoke just before I did, and he was rightly lauded as someone who takes food safety to heart. However, it was his story about Lauren Rudolph and his relationship with Roni Rudolph that struck me. Dave told the very quiet audience about Lauren's death. Dave also told us that the death of Lauren and his friendship with Roni had changed him. He told us all that he had carried a picture of Lauren in his brief case every day since he had taken the job at Jack in the Box. He told us that every time he needed to make a food safety decision - who to pick as a supplier, what certain safety specifications should be - he took out Lauren's picture and asked, "What would Lauren want me to do?"
I thought how powerful that image was. The thought of a senior executive holding the picture of a dead child seeking guidance to avoid the next possible illness or death from food is stunning, but completely appropriate. I wonder if Secretaries Vilsack and Sebelius do anything similar when they do their work on President Obama's Food Safety Working Group? If they do not, perhaps they should? Right now, there are hundreds of families struggling with illnesses and death related to food that the Secretaries--and Michael Taylor, the new special food safety advisor--are charged with monitoring, which has been tainted with E. coli O157:H7. And there's still plenty of tainted meat floating around in our food supply from the most recent recall--because that recall was voluntary, and not all the product has been either found--or destroyed. There will be more Moms and Dads like Roni Rudolph, and that's a terrible and sad fact.
Secretaries Vilsack and Sebelius should be like Dave Theno. They should run their departments like Dave ran food safety at Jack in the Box. They should meet the families whose lives have been forever changed by tainted food. They should across kitchen tables, they should go to the children's hospital rooms and see more tubes and wires than can be counted. It's a way of understanding what these families have lived though, and it's a way of understanding what it's like to become ill, and perhaps die from tainted food. Secretaries Vilsack and Sebelius--both of whom are parents--should take these stories into their hearts. It is hard, very hard, but it will give them a real reason to do their jobs. |
