Read this before your next chicken dinner

Rick Schiller of San Jose, Calif. awoke one night to find his leg had turned bright purple. It was hard as a rock and swollen to three times its normal size.

Soon he was also diagnosed with an inflamed colon and a sudden, acute form of arthritis.

And Rick wasn’t alone. He was just one of the victims of a 29-state outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg – an especially dangerous form of the bacteria – linked to chicken in 2013.

When the outbreak ended, we were never given the full story. We never learned how chicken processor Foster Farms got its filthy birds to market, or what our government was doing to keep us safe.

So some investigative reporters from the Oregonian set out to get the truth about the 2013 outbreak. What they found was stunning proof of government incompetence, a dysfunctional inspection system that still isn’t fixed, and a risk of disease – or even death – that’s just as great today as it was two years ago.

The FDA may have been caught off-guard when a salmonella outbreak hit in March 2013 – but health authorities from Oregon and Washington weren’t. They’d been warning the feds about the pending crisis for nine years.

Oregon and Washington had repeatedly linked statewide salmonella outbreaks to the Foster Farms brand. Officials in Oregon were seeing the connection so many times they dubbed the bacteria the “Foster Farms strain.”

But no matter how many letters Oregon and Washington officials sent… or how many phone calls they made… the USDA still wouldn’t act.

In fact, it practically can’t act. Because under our current laws and inspection guidelines, it’s perfectly legal to sell chicken parts (like breasts and thighs) contaminated with salmonella.

That’s not true of all contaminants, of course. As a result of an outbreak of food poisoning that killed four children in the 1990s, seven strains of E. coli are now considered adulterants. That means the government can order recalls whenever those contaminants are detected.

But courts have ruled that no such restriction can be placed on salmonella, which now causes more hospitalizations and deaths than any other food-borne bacteria. It sickens an estimated one million people in the U.S. every year. And contaminated poultry is the cause in about 200,000 of those cases.

So the USDA cited Foster Farms for a handful of violations, but it never stopped the company from sending diseased chicken to market.

In fact, the chicken was only recalled after the feds discovered an unopened package carrying the exact same strain of salmonella found in one of the food poisoning victims.

And even then, our government had to go, hat in hand, to Foster Farms and ask them to recall their infested, sickening product – voluntarily.

Since the Foster Farms disaster the USDA asked for a bigger budget so it can better protect us. But more money isn’t going to fix this problem. We have to protect ourselves.

The first step is to try to avoid chicken from these filthy, over-packed factory farms like Foster Farms and Tyson.

And consider everything that comes into contact with raw poultry to be contaminated. The sink, dishes, knives and especially your hands.

Also:

• Never use wooden cutting boards to prepare raw chicken. They’re porous, soak up contaminants, and are hard to get clean. Use either a paper bag that you discard or a large platter you wash afterward with detergent.
• Be sure to wash your hands thoroughly after handling raw poultry, and before touching any other food. And don’t rinse the raw poultry in the sink – splashed water drops can easily contaminate your kitchen counters.
• When you cook chicken use a meat thermometer. The thickest part should reach an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit to kill all bacteria. Your cooking time should be 20 minutes per pound. And be sure it’s not pink inside.
• Leftovers should be stored in freezer wrap at 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the refrigerator or 0 degrees in the freezer.

Finally, consider buying whole chickens, just as our parents and grandparents did. There are no federal restrictions on salmonella in chicken parts, but, believe it or not, there’s a limit on the number of raw whole chickens inspected that can contain salmonella.

It’s three out of 40 – which is still three too many.

Sources:

“A game of chicken” Lynne Terry, May 1, 2015, The Oregonian, oregonlive.com