What she ate almost killed her

October 2004
Good Housekeeping
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One Little Girl's Story

Savana Thacker -- "Vanny" to her parents and three older brothers -- was, according to this feature, the megawatt star of her family. Mother, Kristi, a registered nurse in the rural town of Eldon, Missouri , was quoted as saying, "Nine hundred miles an hour, never stopped. Vanny was always outside, always following her brothers, looking for bugs and worms and snakes and other good things. When she wasn't running around being ornery and the center of attention, then we were trying to figure out what was wrong."

The feature says that on August 19, 2002, something was seriously wrong. For five days, five-year-old Savana had been sick, the last two with nonstop vomiting. Now she was barely able to keep her eyes open. Most alarming to her mother, she was silent.

At 8am, Kristi took her daughter to a family medical clinic; in the waiting room, the doctor noticed that Savana was quickly becoming jaundiced. He instructed Kristi to drive immediately to the hospital in Jefferson City -- 30 miles away. There, an emergency room physician told Kristi, "We have a big problem." Savana's kidneys and liver had shut down. An ambulance rushed the little girl to the university hospital in Columbia -- another 30 miles away.

Not long after doctors there began working on Savana, a pediatric kidney specialist gently pulled Kristi aside and gave her grave news. Her daughter had hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS. This devastating disease is a complication of food poisoning. It comes from meat that has been contaminated with certain strains of the bacterium E. coli -- in this case, the strain called O157:H7. While anyone can become ill from eating this tainted meat, for small children it can be deadly. (HUS sprang onto the public stage in 1993 with an outbreak traced to fast food from Jack in the Box.)

The feature describes in detail the food safety system in the U.S. and says that while there are shortcomings at every point, it is the recall system -- the final safety net -- that has some of the most dangerous flaws.

For one, recalls are voluntary: No federal agency can order a manufacturer to pull a contaminated food product from the market, with the exception of infant formula; it can only request that the item be removed.

More alarming, the process is shrouded in secrecy. You may hear the name of the manufacturer mentioned on a TV report or read about it in the paper. But unless your local market chooses to identify itself, you won't learn that the store has sold potentially lethal meat. It is no surprise, then, that only a small percentage of recalled foods is ever accounted for. The rest may have already been consumed or disposed of by the retailer or restaurant. Or it may wait in freezers in private homes.

Diary of a Disaster
June 30, 2002
The USDA announces the recall of 354,200 pounds of fresh and frozen ground beef produced by ConAgra.

July 16
Kristi Thacker buys a five-pound package of ConAgra ground beef, packaged under a store-brand name, from her local grocery in Eldon, Missouri. She freezes the meat.

July 19
USDA announces expanded recall of 18 million pounds of ConAgra ground beef. Kristi Thacker is unaware of the recall.

August 14
Savana Thacker becomes sick several days after eating home-cooked meals that were made with ground beef.

August 19
Savana is rushed to the university hospital in Columbia.

August 20 to 25
Savana hovers near death, then begins to recover.

August 26
Savana is released from the hospital.

Early September
Kristi Thacker learns about ConAgra recall.

Soon after Savana returned home, Kristi set about trying to find out what food had nearly killed her daughter. The county health department said that no other E. coli O157:H7 cases had been reported. The 4-H booth at a fair where the family had eaten checked out clean.

But a few days later, in early September, a friend of Kristi's happened to mention a meat recall from Gerbes, a local grocery store. "I wonder if Savana's illness could have had anything to do with that," she said. Kristi hadn't heard about the problem. That same day, though, she asked the store manager if there had been any meat recalls in August. No, the manager answered -- but there had been one in June and one in July. She handed
Kristi information about a massive recall from meatpacking giant ConAgra Beef Company.

On June 30, 2002, the company had announced a recall of 354,200 pounds of ground beef; USDA inspectors had traced E. coli O157:H7-contaminated meat to a ConAgra facility in Greeley, Colorado. Ultimately, the tainted meat would be blamed for at least 46 cases of E. coli infection and possibly one death. Then, on July 19, after inspectors looked into plant practices and company records, the recall was expanded to 18 million pounds. (ConAgra denies that anyone got sick from the meat that was included in the second recall.)

When Kristi learned the details of the recalls, she was stunned. Every week, she purchased ground beef at Gerbes, including a five-pound package on July 16 -- just three days before the second recall, when it was taken off store shelves. For a full month, the deadly meat sat in her freezer. She had served it to her family at least three times, in hamburgers, in casseroles and in meatloaf.

Kristi asked the manager how the grocery store notifies the public about meat recalls. She told Kristi that notices were posted in the meat department.

"Where?" said Kristi, who prided herself on being an alert shopper. At the window where customers order special cuts, she remembers the manager saying. No wonder Kristi had missed the sign in the weeks after she had bought the ground beef but before Savana got sick. That window wasn't near the large refrigerator case where she had reached down to grab the package. What's more, the store had been instructed to post the notice for one week only. USDA's Elsa Murano was quoted as saying with reference to the most serious "Class I" recalls, where there's a reasonable chance that the implicated food will cause illness or death, that, "I honestly believe that people are getting the information they need. Every Class I recall that we've overseen, the minute the recall begins, there are no new cases of illness, which tells me that people get the message."

But do they? That certainly doesn't seem to be the case, given the near-death experience of Savana Thacker. If knowledge is power, then Americans are in fundamental ways powerless during a recall.