Food Poisoning: Causes and Prevention

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Why do contaminated poultry products cause the most foodborne deaths?

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Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

Remember that 24-hour flu you had last year? Well, there is no such thing as a 24-or 48-hour flu. There is no such thing as stomach flu. What you had is likely food poisoning.

When someone gets hepatitis from eating a strawberry, the hepatitis didn’t come from the strawberry; berries don’t have little livers. As Dr. McDougall liked to ask, when is the last time we heard of someone getting Dutch elm disease or a bad case of aphids?

Just as virtually all known human pandemics come from animals originally, so does most food poisoning––specifically animal feces, and that manure runoff can contaminate sprout seeds, spinach, and other healthy plant foods. Still, that’s better than eating the manure directly. Animal products, particularly fish and poultry, can be covered in fecal bacteria.

It’s so bad that while the U.S. federal government recommends that we wash our fruits and vegetables, we’re not supposed to rinse meat for fear of the viral and bacterial splatter. It’s even been put to the test, and indeed, washing chicken in the sink under standard kitchen faucet conditions can spew droplets containing culturable levels of pathogens throughout the kitchen.

Meat is so covered in fecal matter residue that researchers found more fecal matter in the kitchen—on sponges, dish towels, and sink drains—than they found swabbing the toilet. Even after repeatedly cleaning everything with bleach, it may be safer to lick the rim of the toilet seat than the kitchen countertop, because people aren’t preparing chickens in their toilets.

That chicken “juice” in the cellophane is more like fecal soup. As described by a head of the food inspectors’ union: “you take a chicken that eats, sleeps, craps and everything in one little space, they enter the scald vat dirty, and it takes only a few minutes to become just brown fecal soup.” And that’s what leaks out of the chicken later in the meat case. No wonder poultry accounts for more food poisoning outbreaks than any other food. And, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office, contaminated poultry products also cause the most deaths.

This is because two of the most significant causes of hospitalizations and death, Campylobacter and Salmonella, are found in poultry. Campylobacter is a fecal poultry pathogen that can trigger something called Guillain-Barré syndrome, where you come down with Campylobacter food poisoning once, and then you can end up paralyzed on a ventilator. You’re not in a coma; you’re awake, but you can be so completely paralyzed you can’t even breathe on your own, like straight out of a buried alive horror movie. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearly half of chicken quarters or halves in the United States are contaminated with this pathogen.

But Campylobacter isn’t the leading cause of food poisoning hospitalizations. That’s Salmonella, which is also the leading cause of foodborne death.

An investigation by Consumer Reports found widespread Salmonella contamination; 31 percent of ground chicken samples taken from grocery stores across the U.S. were found to be tainted with Salmonella.

All the Salmonella they found was resistant to at least one antibiotic, and 78 percent were resistant to multiple drugs. That’s one of the reasons Salmonella is the leading reason people can die from a single meal. It’s difficult to treat human Salmonella infections because they’re becoming resistant to so many of our miracle drug antibiotics.

After the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak in the early nineties, E. coli O157:H7 was officially deemed an adulterant––meaning contaminated beef could not be legally sold and has to be recalled. But the USDA has not taken similar action to protect the public from Salmonella, which is widespread in chicken thanks to the often crowded and filthy conditions in which they are raised. More than a million Americans get sick from Salmonella every year; that’s about five times more than E. coli sickens, yet the USDA looks the other way if less than one in six chicken parts is contaminated, and even when those levels are exceeded, the meat still ends up in grocery stores. So, when you actually test retail chicken parts, more than 40 percent can be contaminated with Salmonella.

Why is it that European nations can boast so much lower Salmonella contamination? Because in Europe, they require that their meat is Salmonella free. They still find some Salmonella -contaminated flocks, but the difference is that it is illegal to sell Salmonella-positive chicken there. Banning contaminated poultry is a “hard-handed” policy, an Alabama poultry science professor explains: “The fact is that it’s too expensive not to sell Salmonella-positive chicken.” Let that sink in for a moment. That’s like a toy manufacturer saying, “Sorry, we’d love to pull the unsafe toys from the market, but such a large percentage of our toys are hazardous, that would just be too expensive.”

In 2023, the USDA at least proposed that we shouldn’t allow Salmonella in products like raw frozen breaded poultry products that consumers may undercook. What did the National Chicken Council have to say? The poultry industry was gravely concerned. Not about all the graves created by their products, but the “200 million servings of this product [that] will be lost.” This is the poultry industry admitting that they are producing hundreds of millions of servings of Salmonella-contaminated chicken every year.

In terms of fish hygiene, researchers swabbed sushi for fecal bacteria. Nearly all samples violated international food safety standards. They also tested cucumber and avocado rolls and found no fecal contamination––perhaps because, unlike salmon, tuna, and shrimp, fruits and vegetables don’t have rectums. Though the E. coli may not necessarily be coming from fish butts, as higher E. coli counts were found when sushi was prepared with bare hands, compared to gloved.

What percentage of other meat may come prepackaged with poop? Anywhere from a quarter to two-thirds.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Motion graphics by Avo Media

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

Remember that 24-hour flu you had last year? Well, there is no such thing as a 24-or 48-hour flu. There is no such thing as stomach flu. What you had is likely food poisoning.

When someone gets hepatitis from eating a strawberry, the hepatitis didn’t come from the strawberry; berries don’t have little livers. As Dr. McDougall liked to ask, when is the last time we heard of someone getting Dutch elm disease or a bad case of aphids?

Just as virtually all known human pandemics come from animals originally, so does most food poisoning––specifically animal feces, and that manure runoff can contaminate sprout seeds, spinach, and other healthy plant foods. Still, that’s better than eating the manure directly. Animal products, particularly fish and poultry, can be covered in fecal bacteria.

It’s so bad that while the U.S. federal government recommends that we wash our fruits and vegetables, we’re not supposed to rinse meat for fear of the viral and bacterial splatter. It’s even been put to the test, and indeed, washing chicken in the sink under standard kitchen faucet conditions can spew droplets containing culturable levels of pathogens throughout the kitchen.

Meat is so covered in fecal matter residue that researchers found more fecal matter in the kitchen—on sponges, dish towels, and sink drains—than they found swabbing the toilet. Even after repeatedly cleaning everything with bleach, it may be safer to lick the rim of the toilet seat than the kitchen countertop, because people aren’t preparing chickens in their toilets.

That chicken “juice” in the cellophane is more like fecal soup. As described by a head of the food inspectors’ union: “you take a chicken that eats, sleeps, craps and everything in one little space, they enter the scald vat dirty, and it takes only a few minutes to become just brown fecal soup.” And that’s what leaks out of the chicken later in the meat case. No wonder poultry accounts for more food poisoning outbreaks than any other food. And, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office, contaminated poultry products also cause the most deaths.

This is because two of the most significant causes of hospitalizations and death, Campylobacter and Salmonella, are found in poultry. Campylobacter is a fecal poultry pathogen that can trigger something called Guillain-Barré syndrome, where you come down with Campylobacter food poisoning once, and then you can end up paralyzed on a ventilator. You’re not in a coma; you’re awake, but you can be so completely paralyzed you can’t even breathe on your own, like straight out of a buried alive horror movie. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearly half of chicken quarters or halves in the United States are contaminated with this pathogen.

But Campylobacter isn’t the leading cause of food poisoning hospitalizations. That’s Salmonella, which is also the leading cause of foodborne death.

An investigation by Consumer Reports found widespread Salmonella contamination; 31 percent of ground chicken samples taken from grocery stores across the U.S. were found to be tainted with Salmonella.

All the Salmonella they found was resistant to at least one antibiotic, and 78 percent were resistant to multiple drugs. That’s one of the reasons Salmonella is the leading reason people can die from a single meal. It’s difficult to treat human Salmonella infections because they’re becoming resistant to so many of our miracle drug antibiotics.

After the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak in the early nineties, E. coli O157:H7 was officially deemed an adulterant––meaning contaminated beef could not be legally sold and has to be recalled. But the USDA has not taken similar action to protect the public from Salmonella, which is widespread in chicken thanks to the often crowded and filthy conditions in which they are raised. More than a million Americans get sick from Salmonella every year; that’s about five times more than E. coli sickens, yet the USDA looks the other way if less than one in six chicken parts is contaminated, and even when those levels are exceeded, the meat still ends up in grocery stores. So, when you actually test retail chicken parts, more than 40 percent can be contaminated with Salmonella.

Why is it that European nations can boast so much lower Salmonella contamination? Because in Europe, they require that their meat is Salmonella free. They still find some Salmonella -contaminated flocks, but the difference is that it is illegal to sell Salmonella-positive chicken there. Banning contaminated poultry is a “hard-handed” policy, an Alabama poultry science professor explains: “The fact is that it’s too expensive not to sell Salmonella-positive chicken.” Let that sink in for a moment. That’s like a toy manufacturer saying, “Sorry, we’d love to pull the unsafe toys from the market, but such a large percentage of our toys are hazardous, that would just be too expensive.”

In 2023, the USDA at least proposed that we shouldn’t allow Salmonella in products like raw frozen breaded poultry products that consumers may undercook. What did the National Chicken Council have to say? The poultry industry was gravely concerned. Not about all the graves created by their products, but the “200 million servings of this product [that] will be lost.” This is the poultry industry admitting that they are producing hundreds of millions of servings of Salmonella-contaminated chicken every year.

In terms of fish hygiene, researchers swabbed sushi for fecal bacteria. Nearly all samples violated international food safety standards. They also tested cucumber and avocado rolls and found no fecal contamination––perhaps because, unlike salmon, tuna, and shrimp, fruits and vegetables don’t have rectums. Though the E. coli may not necessarily be coming from fish butts, as higher E. coli counts were found when sushi was prepared with bare hands, compared to gloved.

What percentage of other meat may come prepackaged with poop? Anywhere from a quarter to two-thirds.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Motion graphics by Avo Media

Doctor's Note

For more on food poisoning, check out:

There are also foodborne pathogens with pandemic potential. See How to Prevent the Next Pandemic.

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