Food Safety Outbreak: Watermelon
A 3-year-old girl in Milwaukee died in 2001 after eating watermelon at a restaurant; the melon had accidentally been spattered with juice from sirloin tips tainted with E. Coli bacteria.
The place where the meat had become contaminated with fecal matter was an Excel Corp. Colorado slaughterhouse where FDA inspectors had repeatedly documented sanitation problems.
In fact, the plant had been cited for food safety issues 26 times in the 10 months prior to the child’s death. Yet the FDA inspectors had no authority to correct the problems that they witnessed.
A retired inspector was quoted as saying "We used to sit around the office and say, 'They're going to have to kill someone before anything gets done.' "
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Sources
Warrick, J. 2001. An Outbreak Waiting to Happen: Beef-Inspection Failures Let In a Deadly Microbe. Washington Post, Apr. 9, accessed July 23, 2010.
