Business of Disaster
PBS FRONTLINE, NPR and IRW examine why thousands of residents of New Jersey and New York are still struggling more than three years after a huge East Coast storm devastated their communities.
Are you handling raw chicken the wrong way?
Americans eat 8 billion chickens a year. That’s right — billion with a “B.” But about one in four pieces of raw chicken carry salmonella, and salmonella from poultry sickens 200,000 Americans a year, according to government data. Handling chicken properly and cooking it well is supposed to get rid of the salmonella. However, a …
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Two agencies, two standards: Would one be better?
Salmonella is banned in walnuts and tomatoes, but is still allowed in raw chicken. Could a new government agency bridge the divide in safety standards? When Trader Joe’s learned in March that bags of its walnuts may have contained salmonella, the grocery chain immediately recalled the product out of what it called “an abundance of …
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Salmonella still leading source of foodborne illness
Salmonella sickens more than 1 million Americans every year, with about 200,000 illnesses caused by contaminated poultry. Some strains of salmonella are becoming antibiotic resistant, making them more severe and difficult to treat. Key Findings of ‘The Trouble with Chicken’ investigation: Twenty years after the major E. coli 0157 outbreak from Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers highlighted the …
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The Trouble with Chicken
Is our food-safety process working? About one in four pieces of raw chicken is contaminated with salmonella, with some strains of the bacteria becoming more severe. FRONTLINE investigates the spread of these dangerous pathogens at a time when Americans are consuming more chicken than ever. The program, a co-production with the Workshop, traces a major …
Can we get to zero salmonella in poultry?
People may think that the chicken and turkey they buy at the grocery store is bacteria-free, but the government actually allows some salmonella in the raw poultry that’s sold to the public. Consumer advocates have been calling for zero tolerance of dangerous types of salmonella in poultry in order to cut down on the number …
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Europeans took action 20 years ago
While in the U.S. debate continues over whether there’s a connection between antibiotic resistance and the use of the drugs in food animals, in Europe, concern about the potential risk to human health has sparked legislative action dating back more than 20 years. It’s not that Europeans have different — or much clearer — science …
The men who knew
Today’s debate over the use of antibiotics in food animals is hardly new. Nearly 40 years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tried — and failed — to restrict the use of these drugs in animal feeds on the farm. That battle of 1977 is critical to understanding why the agency has taken …
Sharp increase in sales of antibiotics for farm animals
New data from the Food and Drug Administration shows that the sale of antibiotics for farm animals is on the rise, amid concerns that their use is contributing to increasing drug-resistant infections in humans. The FDA reported earlier this month that sales of antibiotics for agriculture climbed 16 percent in the United States between 2009 …
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The Trouble with Antibiotics
PBS FRONTLINE, in a co-production with the Investigative Reporting Workshop, is airing a new one-hour program, “The Trouble with Antibiotics,” on Oct. 14 at 10 p.m. Correspondent and reporter David E. Hoffman looks at the widespread use of antibiotics in food animals and, in a follow-up to last fall’s documentary, “Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria,” talks …
