Safe to Eat? American Food Safety · Episode 1 of 8 · 17 min
The View from the Salad Bowl
The United States built one of the safest food supplies on Earth, yet a single field can still sicken thousands of people across dozens of states. Starting at the edge of the Salinas Valley, where much of the nation's salad is grown, the episode asks how a supply once thick with chalk, formaldehyde and embalmed beef became safe, and why failures now grow bigger and more national.
Where it happens
- Salinas Valley, California+7 more episodesThe Salad Bowl of the World, top U.S. summer source of greens
- Monterey County, California+7 more episodesHome county of the Salinas Valley
Timeline
- 1850s-1900Age of adulteration: swill milk, embalmed milk and beef, patent medicines
- 1902-1906The Poison Squad, The Jungle and the first federal food laws
- 1937-1968Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster and the modern regulatory architecture
- 2006-2020Leafy-green E. coli outbreaks and the epidemiology of scale
- 2011-2026Food Safety Modernization Act, today's recalls and the reform frontier
Still debated
Whether food is safer or riskier is answered as both: safer on average, with larger national failures. How much the rise in big multistate outbreaks reflects real change versus better detection through whole-genome sequencing is also unsettled.
