I received a fragment from a GE proponent of the program in which it is mentioned
that
76 million people yearly attrack e-coli and/or salmonella infection. Now, if
organic is 1% of the market, I understand 2,5 million of these are organic
consumers eating Spring Mix, but who are the other 73,5 million?
wytze
Rick Roush wrote:
>
> I have a what is supposed to be a transcript of the program. Is the
> following excerpt an accurate reflection of the program?
>
> Dr. Lester Crawford was once Chief of Food Safety for the Government. Now, he
> runs the food and nutrition center at Georgetown University. Everything has
> a little bacteria, but that's okay. We can handle that?
> LESTER CRAWFORD (former Chief of Food Safety for the Government): You can
> handle spoilage bacteria, but you can't handle pathogens, those bacteria
> that cause disease in humans.
> REPORTER: The Center for Disease Control say thousands of Americans die
> every year after eating food, mostly meat rather than produce, that contains
> organisms like e-coli or salmonella. And many more get sick? And they think
> they have the flu?
> CRAWFORD: Approximately 76 million get sick each year with one of these
> organisms.
> REPORTER: Seventy-six million, many of you who thought you had the flu were
> really sick from food. Some get seriously sick. When Haylee Bernstein was 3,
> she ate some organic lettuce that had been contaminated by cow manure. Her
> kidneys shut down. She spent months in a hospital, on a ventilator, until
> she was released with permanent damage to her sight.
> BERNSTEIN (Haylee's Mother): You're talking a perfectly healthy, normal, you
> know, great kid, who just ate some lettuce.
> REPORTER: But who says that there are more of these organisms in organic
> foods? We searched the records and found there have been no tests done that
> actually compare bacteria counts in organic versus normal food. So we did
> our own laboratory sampling.
> DR. MICHAEL DOYLE (University of Georgia): We're testing for two types of
> microorganisms.
> REPORTER: "20/20" paid Dr. Michael Doyle of the University of Georgia to run
> the tests. He had students buy some of the foods from Georgia markets and we
> flew in some additional organics from California. Doyle's researchers put
> the produce in these bags filled with liquid. A machine shakes the bags for
> five minutes. Then, the liquid is extracted and put here, on these discs.
> And then it's left to sit for 24 hours to see if any bacteria grows.
> DOYLE: And this is what it looks like after they've been growing. This is
> what it looks like before.
> REPORTER: If the food contains the dangerous e-coli, tiny blue specs appear.
> Bad news, in our tests on 5% of the food, we found those specs. Which foods?
> Well broccoli, parsley and celery were generally bacteria free. But when
> they tested samples of sprouts and the pre-bagged pieces of lettuce called
> Spring Mix that's where they found bacteria. A third of the sprouts had
> sewage contamination?
> DOYLE: Yes. And the so-called Spring Greens were contaminated also.
> REPORTER: By a small margin, more of the organic produce was contaminated
> than the conventional stuff. But the real bad news for you organics buyers
> is that the average concentration of e-coli in the contaminated Spring Mix
> was much higher. And what about pesticides? Our tests surprisingly found no
> pesticide residue on the conventional samples or the organic.
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