Anonymous,

William Whitt, a healthy young father of three, fell violently ill with overpowering abdominal pains. When he raced to the hospital, his whole body swelled; and despite being on powerful painkillers, he suffered in agonizing pain for days.

How did he get so sick so fast? Puzzled doctors struggled to find the cause. The solution came when William disclosed he had eaten two salads from a pizza shop -- which doctors discovered were contaminated with E. coli bacteria.1

There is still a gap in our food safety system: The FDA won't implement a rule requiring growers to limit hazardous pathogens such as E. coli in water used on our food for a few more years.

The FDA should move more quickly to close this gap, as this was the likely cause of contamination outbreaks from spinach to romaine lettuce.

Tell the FDA to protect Americans from food contamination like E. coli by implementing stronger regulations now.

William almost lost his life from a salad. And he isn't alone -- 128,000 individuals are hospitalized and 3,000 die every year from foodborne illness.2 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 1 in 6 people in the U.S. contract foodborne illnesses each year.3

And yet, the FDA lacks any public health standard for the agricultural water used on our vegetables. That means runoff from cattle farms could pollute the water used to irrigate crops and contaminate fields where the fresh produce we eat is grown.

In 2011, Congress moved toward a solution and passed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). This law was intended to improve food tracking and legal oversight of the food production system -- but the FDA decided to delay these life-saving measures.4

Join U.S. PIRG in telling the FDA to improve its oversight of our food production system.

There is no time to wait when it comes to our health.

There are simple, commonsense ways to ensure food safety and prevent millions of food-related illnesses. The FDA should implement thorough food and water testing, enforce safety measures at food-producing plants, and improve recall effectiveness, among a number of other upgrades.

Tell the FDA: Don't wait to start protecting our health. Update the oversight of our food production system now.

Thank you,

Faye Park
President

1. Elizabeth Shogren and Susan Neilson, "The Science Is Clear: Dirty Farm Water Is Making Us Sick," September 7, 2018.
2. "How Safe is our Food? Not Safe Enough, Says PIRG Consumer Watchdog Team, and it's Trending in the Wrong Direction," U.S. PIRG, February 11, 2019.
3. "How Safe is our Food? Not Safe Enough, Says PIRG Consumer Watchdog Team, and it's Trending in the Wrong Direction," U.S. PIRG, February 11, 2019.
4. "FSMA Final Rule on Produce Safety," U.S. Food and Drug Administration, accessed January 23, 2019.