Your kitchen sink

DURING THE 1990s, the federal government (which is supposed to ensure food safety) applied standards to the meat it purchased for schools that were much less stringent than the standards applied by the fast food industry (which is responsible for much of the current threat to food safety). Having played a central role in the creation of a meatpacking system that can spread bacterial contamination far and wide, the fast food chains are now able to avoid many of the worst consequences. Much like Jack in the Box, the leading chains have in recent years forced their suppliers to conduct frequent tests for E. coli 0157:H7 and other pathogens. More importantly, the enormous buying power of the fast food giants has given them access to some of the cleanest ground beef. The meatpacking industry is now willing to perform the sort of rigorous testing for fast food chains that it refuses to do for the general public.

Anyone who brings raw ground beef into his or her kitchen today must regard it as a potential biohazard, one that may carry an extremely dangerous microbe, infectious at an extremely low dose. The current high levels of ground beef contamination, combined with the even higher levels of poultry contamination, have led to some bizarre findings. A series of tests conducted by Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, discovered far more fecal bacteria in the average American kitchen sink than on the average American toilet seat. According to Gerba, “You’d be better off eating a carrot stick that fell in your toilet than one that fell in your sink.”

Although the fast food chains have belatedly made food safety a priority, their production and distribution systems remain vulnerable to newly emerging foodborne pathogens. A virus that carries the gene to produce Shiga toxins is now infecting previously harmless strains of E. coli . Dr. David Acheson, an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University Medical School, believes the spread of that virus is being encouraged by the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in cattle feed. In addition to E. coli 0157:H7, approximately sixty to one hundred other mutant E. coli organisms now produce Shiga toxins. Perhaps a third of them cause illnesses in human beings. Among the most dangerous are E. coli 0103, 0111, 026, 0121, and 0145. The standard tests being used to find E. coli 0157:H7 do not detect the presence of these other bugs. The CDC now estimates that roughly 37,000 Americans suffer food poisoning each year from non‑0157 strains of E. coli, about 1,000 people are hospitalized, and about 25 die.

No matter how well executed the HACCP plan, no matter how highly automated the grills, no matter how many bursts of gamma radiation are fired at the meat, the safety of the food at any restaurant ultimately depends upon the workers in its kitchen. Dr. Patricia Griffin, one of the CDC’s leading experts on E. coli 0157:H7, believes that food safety classes should be mandatory for fast food workers. “We place our lives in their hands,” she says, “in the same way we entrust our lives to the training of airline pilots.” Griffin worries that a low‑paid, unskilled workforce composed of teenagers and recent immigrants may not always be familiar with proper food handling procedures.

Dr. Griffin has good reason to worry. A 1997 undercover investigation by KCBS‑TV in Los Angeles videotaped local restaurant workers sneezing into their hands while preparing food, licking salad dressing off their fingers, picking their noses, and flicking their cigarettes into meals about to be served. In May of 2000, three teenage employees at a Burger King in Scottsville, New York, were arrested for putting spit, urine, and cleaning products such as Easy‑Off Oven Cleaner and Comet with Bleach into the food. They had allegedly tampered with the Burger King food for eight months, and it was served to thousands of customers, until a fellow employee informed the management.

The teenage fast food workers I met in Colorado Springs, Colorado, told me other horror stories. The safety of the food seemed to be determined more by the personality of the manager on duty than by the written policies of the chain. Many workers would not eat anything at their restaurant unless they’d made it themselves. A Taco Bell employee said that food dropped on the floor was often picked up and served. An Arby’s employee told me that one kitchen worker never washed his hands at work after doing engine repairs on his car. And several employees at the same McDonald’s restaurant in Colorado Springs independently provided details about a cockroach infestation in the milk‑shake machine and about armies of mice that urinated and defecated on hamburger rolls left out to thaw in the kitchen every night.