What's in your beef?
Tell Secretary Vilsack to beef up the USDA's E. coli testing program.

Dear Supporter,

Tell Secretary Vilsack to beef up the USDA's E. coli testing program.

On Sunday, the New York Times told the story of a 22 year-old woman who was left paralyzed after a long illness caused by an E. coli 0157:H7-contaminated hamburger. By tracing the path of the burger that made her sick, the article exposed dangerous loopholes in USDA's ground beef testing program. Tell Secretary Vilsack the time is now to beef up the USDA's E. coli testing program.

Food & Water Watch and other consumer groups have been telling the USDA for years that the agency needed to strengthen its E. coli policy. We have been urging the agency to change how it responds to finding contamination in a finished product like ground beef. Because contamination starts much earlier in the process than when beef is ground into hamburger (and sometimes at a different company's facility), the agency should make it a point to investigate up the supply chain to find the source of the contamination problem. Without doing this, the agency misses an opportunity to prevent even more contaminated product from reaching consumers.

So far, the agency has not responded, refusing to even hold a public meeting to discuss their procedures for dealing with E. coli contamination.

It's time for USDA to take the threat of contaminated ground beef seriously and update its policies. Tell Secretary Vilsack to beef up the USDA's E. coli testing program.

Thanks for taking action,

Alex, Sarah, Noelle and the Food Team
Food & Water Watch
goodfood(at)fwwatch.org

PS - You can read more about what USDA should do to fix their ground beef testing program on our blog.

Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. We challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.

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