freeSpeech: Nancy Donley

(CBS)  Like most Americans, I had always assumed that our meat and poultry was safe.

I learned just how wrong I was when my only child died a painful death after eating E. coli-contaminated ground beef. Alex was only 6 years old when he died, and not a day goes by that I don't miss him terribly.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that every year 5,000 people die and 76 million become sick from contaminated food. And our children are particularly at risk. These statistics show the need for stronger regulations and better inspection to keep unsafe food off our tables. Unfortunately, the opposite is happening.

For years, Congress has cut budgets that affect federal food safety programs. As a result, there are not nearly enough meat and poultry inspectors to cover all the processing plants. So inspectors must now necessarily spend less and less time in each plant and more and more time in their cars traveling between plants. Government officials call this "alternative staffing strategies." I call it "drive-by" inspection.

Such neglect could seriously affect the safety of the chicken and hamburgers that make it to our dinner plates.

Our families deserve safer food. Government needs to make food safety a top priority. After all, everyone has to eat.


Nancy Donley lives in Chicago and is the past president of a food safety organization called Safe Tables Our Priority, which was born out of the E. coli outbreak at California Jack-in-the-Box's. She lost her 6-year-old son in the outbreak; since then, she's been working to make the country's food supply safer. She is troubled by budget cuts in the federal food inspection service that may leave more and more holes in the safety net.

[gentlearts]

I am so sorry for your loss. As a mother, I know it would be so hard to ever get over such a needless tragedy.

I agree the government should put food safety as a high priority, but raising taxes is not necessary. The gov't has plenty of money to cover what is important, but just squanders it on pork and unnecessary bureaucracy. We must hold members of congress accountable at the polls.

Our country does a fabulous job, for the most part, producing enough food to feed the world. While any life lost is tragic, these incidents are microscopic in scope compared to all the successes.

[liberalmedia]

I extend my deepest condolences to Ms. Donley for the loss of her son, as well as to the others who lost loved ones in that outbreak.

Ms. Donley brings to light an important point: budget cuts to important areas of the government like food safety inspection. These are critical areas that must not be allowed to fall by the wayside because of more "important" issues such as national security.

I, for one, am willing to pay slightly higher federal taxes each year if the money is used to prevent deadly outbreaks of disease, such as the spinach outbreak or the one that claimed Ms. Donley's son.

It is not unreasonable for the government to ask for slightly higher taxes, if it helps them do their jobs, and do them correctly, without corruption and waste.

[bellal-2009]

Thank you Ms. Donley for your work in keeping our food safe. I remember the horrors of the Ecoli outbreak at Jack in the Box in Wa. state in the early '90's. Every time I eat a hamburger I think of it and I still check the center of the kids'burgers to make sure they're not pink. I had no idea you could die from food poinsoning until that happened. Many children died.