In 2010, two producers recalled more than half a billion eggs after regulators traced an outbreak of salmonella to unsanitary conditions at two Iowa farms. It was the largest egg recall in history, ultimately sickening nearly 2,000 people and garnering national headlines.
Investigators eventually reported a wide array of safety violations, from live rodents in the henhouses to manure oozing out of the buildings. In a congressional hearing about a month after the recall, lawmakers asked regulators why they hadn’t noticed the conditions earlier. One of the farms had a history of safety violations. How could they have missed it?
At first, this looked like an embarrassing lapse. A failure at this scale suggested that the federal food safety system — which officials often credit for the world’s safest food supply — had somehow missed problems even though millions of the eggs were packed in cartons stamped with a U.S. Department of Agriculture grade for quality.
Read Full Article »