'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver' on food safety for World Food Day

Happy World Food Day!* I have just the video clip for today, Food Safety: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which was uploaded in the wee hours of the morning. Perfect timing!

John Oliver discusses the groups in charge of keeping our food safe – from the FDA, to the USDA, to, most crucially, the Association for Dressings and Sauces.

I just watched Food, Inc. with my class last week and some of questions on the worksheet pertain to Oliver's video.

12. What is a CAFO?

A concentrated animal feeding operation.

13. How did the feeding of corn to cattle along with other raising and slaughtering practices lead to evolution and spread of a dangerous strain of E. coli?

I answered the first part of this question in Corn questions from 'Food, Inc.' worksheet: "Corn makes cattle stomachs acidic, which promotes strains of E. coli that are pathogens in humans. These strains can then survive passage through human stomachs." The video shows the second part; cattle finish their growth in crowded conditions on CAFOs that allow pathogens to spread from animal to animal. The pathogens, particularly E. coli, can then enter water supplies and pass into vegetables.

14. What effects has the spread of hemorrhagic E. coli had on the food supply? List at least three examples.

In addition to the incident at Jack-in-the-Box, where I worked in the late 1970s, the film mentioned peanut butter and leafy greens, both of which John Oliver also described. Some things haven't changed since Food, Inc.'s release 15 years ago. That's why I still show the documentary to my students.

15. Summarize the story of Kevin Kowalcyk and Kevin’s Bill.

I'll let Wikipedia do that for me.

Kevin's Law (as referred to in Representative Anna Eshoo's introduction of the law in 2005 and in the 2008 documentary Food, Inc.; formally known as the Meat and Poultry Pathogen Reduction and Enforcement Act of 2003, H.R. 2203) was proposed legislation that would have given the United States Department of Agriculture the power to close down plants that produce contaminated meat.[1]

Kevin's Law was nicknamed in memory of two-year-old Kevin Kowalcyk of Colorado, who died in 2001 after developing hemolytic-uremic syndrome due to eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.

The bill was reintroduced by Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, as H.R. 3160, in the 109th Congress.[2][3] This bill never became law, as it was referred to committee but never reported on.

In 2011, President Barack Obama signed into law the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), introduced by Rep. Betty Sutton. The FSMA contains key elements of Kevin's Law.

So some of Kevin's Law has been enacted. That's good news, which I can tell my students. The bad news is that some key provisions were not included in the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act and the FDA is still underfunded, to say nothing of the FDA's glacial bureaucratic organizational culture. Congress could take care of that by funding the agency and reorganizing it.

By the way, not only can I recommend this video to my students, I can recommend Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food to them as well. Welcome to blogging as professional development.

*I normally wait until National Food Day to post an entry like this, but I didn't feel like waiting. Don't worry, I still plan on observing the day next week with the third video in the series that began with Vox explains how 4 companies control the beef industry for a late National Food Day and continued with Vox explains 'The chicken industry’s worker safety problem' for Food Day 2022. Stay tuned.