Food, Inc. Page #3

in their manure

all day long.

So if one cow has it,

the other cows

will get it.

When they get

to the slaughterhouse,

their hides are

caked with manure.

And if the slaughterhouse

is slaughtering

how do you keep

that manure

from getting

onto those carcasses?

And that's how the manure

gets in the meat.

And now this thing

that wasn't in the world

is in the food system.

A fast-food nightmare

may be getting worse.

A two-year-old child died

today in Seattle.

And the killer? Tainted meat from

Jack In The Box hamburgers.

A nationwide recall today

for more than 140 tons

of ground beef.

A half a million pounds of ground beef--

Today, nationwide recalls

of Con Agra ground beef.

E. coli isn't just in ground beef now--

it's been found

in spinach, apple juice--

and this is really because of the runoff

from our factory farms.

of E. coli poisoning.

Central to it all--

raw, bagged spinach.

This is the 20th

E. coli outbreak with leafy greens

in just the last decade.

For years during

the Bush administration,

the chief of staff

at the USDA

was the former

chief lobbyist

to the beef industry

in Washington;

the head of the F.D.A. was

the former executive vice president

of the National

Food Processors Association.

These regulatory agencies

are being controlled

by the very companies

that they're supposed

to be scrutinizing.

ConAgra, which recently

recalled peanut butter

contaminated

with salmonella,

was aware of problems

in its plant two years ago.

There's always been food poisoning.

As more and more

technology

is being applied

to the production of food,

you would think

it would be getting safer,

not more contaminated.

But the processing plants

have gotten bigger and bigger.

it's just perfect

for taking bad pathogens

and spreading them

far and wide.

The recall of frozen

hamburger now includes

Enough meat to make

a fast-food hamburger

for every adult in America

is being recalled.

In the 1970s,

there were literally thousands

of slaughterhouses

in the United States.

Today we have

that process

the majority of beef

that is sold

in the United States.

The hamburger of today,

it has pieces of thousands

of different cattle

ground up in that

one hamburger patty.

The odds increase exponentially

that one of those animals

was carrying

a dangerous pathogen.

It's remarkable

how toothless

our regulatory agencies are

when you look closely at it,

and that's how

the industry wants it.

This is the USDA

building up here.

Did Josh say how much time

he thought we'd get?

- Five minutes.

- Five minutes.

Well, maybe as much as 15.

Got to be on time for that meeting.

- It starts a 4:
00.

- Okay.

So if I start

going like that

- or start shuffling papers, it's time.

- I know, it's time.

Thank you!

Thank you.

I'm a registered Republican.

I've always been

fairly conservative.

I never thought

I would be doing this

and I certainly never

thought I would be

working so closely

with my mom.

- We go this way? Okay.

- Yes, we go this way.

Made a mistake--

I think that's the way we want to go.

My mom and I,

our relationship has

taken on

a whole new dimension.

Here we are.

- Hi.

- Hello.

- How are you?

- I'm Pat.

- Hi, Pat.

- Barb Kowalcyk.

- Hi, Barb.

- After the first big push

to establish food standards,

people just got complacent.

We reduced funding

for the FDA.

We've relied increasingly

on self-policing for all

of these industries.

And now

we just have, really,

lost our system.

You're really one

of the champions on the hill

for food safety and it's a very

important cause.

It's very personal

to me and my family.

Our food safety advocacy

work started six years ago

when my two-and-

a-half-year-old son Kevin

was stricken

with E. coli 0157:h7

and went from being

a perfectly healthy

beautiful little boy--

and I have a small picture

with me today

that was taken two weeks

before he got sick.

He went from that

to being dead in 12 days.

In July 2001,

our family took

a vacation.

Had we known what was

in store for us,

we would have

never gone home.

We ended up eating three hamburgers

before he got sick.

We started to see blood

in Kevin's diarrhea,

so we took him

to the emergency room.

And they said,

"We've gotten

the culture back

from Kevin's stool,

and he has

hemorrhagic E. coli."

They came in

and informed us

that Kevin's kidneys were

starting to fail.

Kevin received

his first dialysis treatment.

He was not allowed

to really drink water.

We had these

little sponges

and we were allowed to dip that

into a cup of water

and then give him that.

He bit the head off

of one of them.

You've never seen

someone beg.

He begged for water.

It was all he could talk about.

They wouldn't let anybody

bring any beverage into the room

because-- I mean, it was

all he would talk about,

was... water.

I don't know if he knew

what was happening to him...

and I hope--

I don't know.

To watch

this beautiful child go

from being perfectly healthy

to dead in 12 days--

it was just unbelievable

that this could happen

from eating food.

What was kind of adding

more insult to injury--

it took us almost

two or three years

and hiring

a private attorney

to actually find out that

we matched a meat recall.

On August 1st, my son was already

in the hospital.

They did an E. coli test

at the plant that was positive.

They didn't end up

recalling that meat

until August 27th,

If we have some more hearings--

which I'm sure we will--

I'd love to have

you come and testify.

- Keep fighting.

- Thank you. You too.

You never get over

the death of your child.

You find a new normal.

- This way?

- Yes.

- We're going this way?

- Mm-hmm.

We put faith in our government

to protect us,

and we're not

being protected

at a most basic level.

In 1998, the USDA implemented

microbial testing

for salmonella

and E. coli 0157:h7.

The idea was that if a plant

repeatedly failed these tests,

that the USDA would

shut the plant down

because they obviously had an ongoing

contamination problem.

The meat

and poultry associations

immediately took

the USDA to court.

The courts

basically said

the USDA didn't have

the authority

to shut down the plants.

What it meant was that

you could have a pound

of meat or poultry products

that is a petri dish

of salmonella

and the USDA

really can't do anything about it.

A new law was introduced

in direct response

and this law became known

as Kevin's Law.

It seems like such a clear-cut,

common sense type thing.

- How are things going?

- Fine fine.

We've been working for six years

and it still

hasn't passed.

I sense that

there may be

an opportunity--

an enhanced opportunity--

to get this signed

into law this time.

I think that from the standpoint

of the consumer,

a lot of people would

support the idea

of paying a little more

if they could be guaranteed

a higher standard

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