Below is the supposed transcript of the 20/20 program, which was
posted at the GENTECH list. I have no idea if it is genuine or
accurate. Can those who saw the program confirm if the transcript
below is accurate?
Roberto
--------------------
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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