OldDog/NewTricks
Well-known member
Jolley: Five Minutes With Jeff Benedict, E. coli & Jack In The Box
10/15/2010 09:23AM
You know the feeling – you read something and those little hairs on the back of your stand at attention. "Oh, damn,' you say, 'here we go, again.'
Here is what I read last week: "For the past year and a half I've been writing a book about the biggest E. coli outbreak in U.S. history.It started in Seattle in 1993 and ended up spreading through most Western states. Jack in the Box restaurants was implicated as the source. Writing this story has changed my life, particularly when it comes to the way I eat. And I'm not just talking about beef."
It was on a blog written by Jeff Benedict, author of eight books on a variety of subjects and my immediate reaction was "Another cheap shot tell-all written by a Michael Pollan wannabe and based on five minutes of flimsy research."
Yeah, that's what I thought.
I mean the Seattle Jack in the Box incident is the seminal event in modern food safety. It was a wake up call, five alarm fire and a legal bombshell all tied up in one cold slap in the face for the food industry. It was a story that just begs for sensationalism long after the fact. A lot of people got sick; four children died and the true life-and-death penalties of food borne illnesses became a gaudy, multi-colored tattoo on the face of public consciousness.
But let me give Benedict a break. After digging into his background, I found out that he researches his subject matter. He really interviews people on both sides of an issue. Maybe what he'll write might actually fly under the harder-and-harder to find banner of 'fair and balanced.'
He has quite a list of subjects under his belt. His first book – Public Heroes, Private Felons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women – was written during his first year of law school in 1997. He was on a book-a-year schedule, publishing three more books by 2000: Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL; Athletes and Acquaintance Rape; and Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World's Largest Casino. Most importantly, he writes for Sports Illustrated which makes him my hero. Brilliant writers have labored for that magazine. The editors have a long record of hiring talented people.
Benedict doesn't shy away from issues that make headlines on those cheesy supermarket tabloids, though. After Kobe Bryant was arrested on rape charges he published Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence & Crime. The book led to an ABC News 20/20 special and three stories he wrote for Sports Illustrated.
For those of you with an opinion on eminent domain, Benedict's Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage might cause you to give him a standing 'O'. He wrote about Kelo v. New London, one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions since Roe v. Wade. The New York Times reviewer wrote, "Little Pink House" is the story of Susette Kelo, who left a loveless marriage in 1997 to renovate a tiny Victorian water¬front house. Kelo quickly found herself on the wrong end of an ambitious plan to turn her neighborhood into a vast corporate playground for Pfizer Inc., complete with a luxury hotel, a health club and sleek condos. The investigative reporter Jeff Benedict has decided to cast Kelo in the style of Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich. But this comes at some journalistic cost: by the time he's finished introducing us to his protagonist (who "had a body that defied the fact that she had delivered five children. Her fiery red hair ran all the way down to her waist"), he risks having written the world's first bodice-ripper about the takings clause."
Benedict's book on the Jack in the Box incident might be worth reading and it will stir the pot, again; a disappointment to a few people that are happy that it had finally faded into history. He spent three years researching it and it's given him some bona fides in food safety issues.
I asked him a few questions about the book and food safety and found myself agreeing with him on quite a few things. A few of his other opinions? I'm not so sure – read his answer to my last question, for instance. You be the judge.
Q. You're working on a book about the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak nearly 18 years ago. Why did you pick that event as your next subject?
A. Actually, I initially set out to write a book about the Salmonella outbreak tied to the Peanut Corporation of America nearly two years ago. Nine people died in the outbreak. I interviewed surviving family members from that outbreak in Vermont, Minnesota and Oregon. I also met personally with Peanut Corporation CEO Stewart Parnell at his home and in his attorney's law office in Roanoke, Virginia, shortly after he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege and chose not to answer questions before Congress. Butin the end, that case didn't have all the necessary elements for a book.
Nonetheless, while researching that case I became familiar with Bill Marler. He represented numerous families in the peanut case. His name also surfaced in my research of other food poison outbreaks. Through discussions with him and other experts, I increasingly turned my attention to the Jack in the Box case. That case is ideal for a book or a movie. Plus, all the key players were willing to participate, including some of the Jack in the Box officials who were at the helm when the outbreak took place.
Q. There were two key figures in that first major outbreak: Robert Nugent, Jack in the Box's CEO and Dave Theno. Nugent became the scapegoat; Theno created E. coli 101 or 'how to clean up the mess afterwards.' In your book research, what have you found out about these two people?
A. On top of numerous phone interviews and many email exchanges with both men, I travelled to San Diego and spent time with Bob Nugent and Dave Theno. I even met Theno in Texas and toured a meat packing plant that uses the safety procedures that he helped implement in the aftermath of the Jack in the Box outbreak.
I don't want to give too much away here. But suffice it to say that I was very impressed with Nugent's candor and his genuine sorrow. People will be surprised by his contribution to the story. As for Theno, he's a character that is impossible not to like. One of the best things Nugent did was hire Theno. I don't think he could have gotten a better guy to revolutionize Jack in the Box's food safety system.
Q. You seem to be enamored of Bill Marler, a lawyer who built his business around food safety issues. He's not one of the most popular people in the meat business. Talking to cattlemen, now, what has he accomplished in the food safety arena?
A. First off, if everybody liked Bill Marler he probably wouldn't be doing his job. No leader pleases everyone. Bill Marler has really emerged as a self-made authority on foodborne illness and food safety. He's changed the way insurance carriers compensate foodborne illness victims, especially children. He has done the only independent testing of non-O157 E. coli (STEC's) presence in meat. He has raised awareness to food safety risks and educated the public through outreach and non-profit work. I could go on.
The bottom line is that if you take him out of the picture, the business of food safety would look terribly different today. And I do mean terribly. It's rare that one person can cast such a huge shadow over an entire industry. As another highly respected lawyer told me, "Bill Marler is the #1 lawyer in his field. How often can you say that about someone?"
Q. The Senate might vote on the Food Safety Modernization Act right after the mid-term elections or whenever Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) decides to release it. Like most bills, it has strengths and weaknesses. What's your opinion on the changes it might create – good and bad - if passed?
A. I have not spent a lot of time focused on the bill except to know that the House passed a similar bill in July of 2009. I understand that both bills only focus on food regulated by the FDA not the FSIS. I think it is fairly clear that more oversight is necessary on food regulated by FDA. Being inspected once every 5-7 years simply does not make sense.
Q. There is an ongoing debate between some of the people in the meat business about the six E. coli STEC's. The AMI says, "declaring non-O157 STECS to be adulterants will not enhance the food safety system, and we think that application of such a policy could consume resources that could be better spent elsewhere to achieve meaningful food safety progress."
Marler self-funded a half million-dollar project aimed at demonstrating the prevalence of STEC's in beef sold at retail to back up his petition to have them declared adulterants. With the limited resources available, what's the best answer?
A. There's no question that the USDA should declare these non-0157 strains as adulterants. That simple step would be a catalyst for all labs to test for the presence of these strains in stool cultures submitted by physicians. There's a simple way of seeing the wisdom in this approach. Prior to the Jack in the Box outbreak, E. coli 0157H7 was not considered an adulterant. As a result, doctors didn't look for it and labs didn't test for it. That all changed after four children died. The change in laws has prevented another large-scale outbreak tied to E. coli O157:H7. The mandated testing leads to early detection, which enables public health officials to notify the public before an outbreak gets out of control. This, to me, is a no-brainer.
Q. Let's point out that meat is not the leading source of foodborne illness. It's a dubious honor that belongs to vegetables. Two of the most widely publicized outbreaks of the past few years were tied to peanuts and eggs. Yet many people still say, "In America, we have the safest food in the world." Break it down for me; in your opinion, how safe is our food?
A. Any time you have such grand scale mass production as we currently see with beef, pork, chicken, and eggs and so many other products, there are going to be problems.
The root cause of many of our food safety issues today is size. We have gotten so far away from consuming locally grown fruits and vegetables and locally raised meat and poultry. The food system has gotten so big and so complicated that most people have no idea where their food comes from, who produced it, or how it got from farm to fork. In fact, a lot of food today doesn't come from farms. It comes from what I'll call factories. The risks go down when you know who, when, where and how your food was produced.
Chuck Jolley is a free lance writer, based in Kansas City, who covers a wide range of ag industry topics for Cattlenetwork.com and Agnetwork.com.
10/15/2010 09:23AM
You know the feeling – you read something and those little hairs on the back of your stand at attention. "Oh, damn,' you say, 'here we go, again.'
Here is what I read last week: "For the past year and a half I've been writing a book about the biggest E. coli outbreak in U.S. history.It started in Seattle in 1993 and ended up spreading through most Western states. Jack in the Box restaurants was implicated as the source. Writing this story has changed my life, particularly when it comes to the way I eat. And I'm not just talking about beef."
It was on a blog written by Jeff Benedict, author of eight books on a variety of subjects and my immediate reaction was "Another cheap shot tell-all written by a Michael Pollan wannabe and based on five minutes of flimsy research."
Yeah, that's what I thought.
I mean the Seattle Jack in the Box incident is the seminal event in modern food safety. It was a wake up call, five alarm fire and a legal bombshell all tied up in one cold slap in the face for the food industry. It was a story that just begs for sensationalism long after the fact. A lot of people got sick; four children died and the true life-and-death penalties of food borne illnesses became a gaudy, multi-colored tattoo on the face of public consciousness.
But let me give Benedict a break. After digging into his background, I found out that he researches his subject matter. He really interviews people on both sides of an issue. Maybe what he'll write might actually fly under the harder-and-harder to find banner of 'fair and balanced.'
He has quite a list of subjects under his belt. His first book – Public Heroes, Private Felons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women – was written during his first year of law school in 1997. He was on a book-a-year schedule, publishing three more books by 2000: Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL; Athletes and Acquaintance Rape; and Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World's Largest Casino. Most importantly, he writes for Sports Illustrated which makes him my hero. Brilliant writers have labored for that magazine. The editors have a long record of hiring talented people.
Benedict doesn't shy away from issues that make headlines on those cheesy supermarket tabloids, though. After Kobe Bryant was arrested on rape charges he published Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence & Crime. The book led to an ABC News 20/20 special and three stories he wrote for Sports Illustrated.
For those of you with an opinion on eminent domain, Benedict's Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage might cause you to give him a standing 'O'. He wrote about Kelo v. New London, one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions since Roe v. Wade. The New York Times reviewer wrote, "Little Pink House" is the story of Susette Kelo, who left a loveless marriage in 1997 to renovate a tiny Victorian water¬front house. Kelo quickly found herself on the wrong end of an ambitious plan to turn her neighborhood into a vast corporate playground for Pfizer Inc., complete with a luxury hotel, a health club and sleek condos. The investigative reporter Jeff Benedict has decided to cast Kelo in the style of Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich. But this comes at some journalistic cost: by the time he's finished introducing us to his protagonist (who "had a body that defied the fact that she had delivered five children. Her fiery red hair ran all the way down to her waist"), he risks having written the world's first bodice-ripper about the takings clause."
Benedict's book on the Jack in the Box incident might be worth reading and it will stir the pot, again; a disappointment to a few people that are happy that it had finally faded into history. He spent three years researching it and it's given him some bona fides in food safety issues.
I asked him a few questions about the book and food safety and found myself agreeing with him on quite a few things. A few of his other opinions? I'm not so sure – read his answer to my last question, for instance. You be the judge.
Q. You're working on a book about the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak nearly 18 years ago. Why did you pick that event as your next subject?
A. Actually, I initially set out to write a book about the Salmonella outbreak tied to the Peanut Corporation of America nearly two years ago. Nine people died in the outbreak. I interviewed surviving family members from that outbreak in Vermont, Minnesota and Oregon. I also met personally with Peanut Corporation CEO Stewart Parnell at his home and in his attorney's law office in Roanoke, Virginia, shortly after he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege and chose not to answer questions before Congress. Butin the end, that case didn't have all the necessary elements for a book.
Nonetheless, while researching that case I became familiar with Bill Marler. He represented numerous families in the peanut case. His name also surfaced in my research of other food poison outbreaks. Through discussions with him and other experts, I increasingly turned my attention to the Jack in the Box case. That case is ideal for a book or a movie. Plus, all the key players were willing to participate, including some of the Jack in the Box officials who were at the helm when the outbreak took place.
Q. There were two key figures in that first major outbreak: Robert Nugent, Jack in the Box's CEO and Dave Theno. Nugent became the scapegoat; Theno created E. coli 101 or 'how to clean up the mess afterwards.' In your book research, what have you found out about these two people?
A. On top of numerous phone interviews and many email exchanges with both men, I travelled to San Diego and spent time with Bob Nugent and Dave Theno. I even met Theno in Texas and toured a meat packing plant that uses the safety procedures that he helped implement in the aftermath of the Jack in the Box outbreak.
I don't want to give too much away here. But suffice it to say that I was very impressed with Nugent's candor and his genuine sorrow. People will be surprised by his contribution to the story. As for Theno, he's a character that is impossible not to like. One of the best things Nugent did was hire Theno. I don't think he could have gotten a better guy to revolutionize Jack in the Box's food safety system.
Q. You seem to be enamored of Bill Marler, a lawyer who built his business around food safety issues. He's not one of the most popular people in the meat business. Talking to cattlemen, now, what has he accomplished in the food safety arena?
A. First off, if everybody liked Bill Marler he probably wouldn't be doing his job. No leader pleases everyone. Bill Marler has really emerged as a self-made authority on foodborne illness and food safety. He's changed the way insurance carriers compensate foodborne illness victims, especially children. He has done the only independent testing of non-O157 E. coli (STEC's) presence in meat. He has raised awareness to food safety risks and educated the public through outreach and non-profit work. I could go on.
The bottom line is that if you take him out of the picture, the business of food safety would look terribly different today. And I do mean terribly. It's rare that one person can cast such a huge shadow over an entire industry. As another highly respected lawyer told me, "Bill Marler is the #1 lawyer in his field. How often can you say that about someone?"
Q. The Senate might vote on the Food Safety Modernization Act right after the mid-term elections or whenever Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) decides to release it. Like most bills, it has strengths and weaknesses. What's your opinion on the changes it might create – good and bad - if passed?
A. I have not spent a lot of time focused on the bill except to know that the House passed a similar bill in July of 2009. I understand that both bills only focus on food regulated by the FDA not the FSIS. I think it is fairly clear that more oversight is necessary on food regulated by FDA. Being inspected once every 5-7 years simply does not make sense.
Q. There is an ongoing debate between some of the people in the meat business about the six E. coli STEC's. The AMI says, "declaring non-O157 STECS to be adulterants will not enhance the food safety system, and we think that application of such a policy could consume resources that could be better spent elsewhere to achieve meaningful food safety progress."
Marler self-funded a half million-dollar project aimed at demonstrating the prevalence of STEC's in beef sold at retail to back up his petition to have them declared adulterants. With the limited resources available, what's the best answer?
A. There's no question that the USDA should declare these non-0157 strains as adulterants. That simple step would be a catalyst for all labs to test for the presence of these strains in stool cultures submitted by physicians. There's a simple way of seeing the wisdom in this approach. Prior to the Jack in the Box outbreak, E. coli 0157H7 was not considered an adulterant. As a result, doctors didn't look for it and labs didn't test for it. That all changed after four children died. The change in laws has prevented another large-scale outbreak tied to E. coli O157:H7. The mandated testing leads to early detection, which enables public health officials to notify the public before an outbreak gets out of control. This, to me, is a no-brainer.
Q. Let's point out that meat is not the leading source of foodborne illness. It's a dubious honor that belongs to vegetables. Two of the most widely publicized outbreaks of the past few years were tied to peanuts and eggs. Yet many people still say, "In America, we have the safest food in the world." Break it down for me; in your opinion, how safe is our food?
A. Any time you have such grand scale mass production as we currently see with beef, pork, chicken, and eggs and so many other products, there are going to be problems.
The root cause of many of our food safety issues today is size. We have gotten so far away from consuming locally grown fruits and vegetables and locally raised meat and poultry. The food system has gotten so big and so complicated that most people have no idea where their food comes from, who produced it, or how it got from farm to fork. In fact, a lot of food today doesn't come from farms. It comes from what I'll call factories. The risks go down when you know who, when, where and how your food was produced.
Chuck Jolley is a free lance writer, based in Kansas City, who covers a wide range of ag industry topics for Cattlenetwork.com and Agnetwork.com.
