Attorney Bill Marler goes on the record about his clients appearing in big media...and his campaign to improve American food safety as fast as possibleAbove the fold on the front page of the New York Times today: An exhaustively researched investigative report that was months in the making, about tainted ground beef and its impact on Stephanie Smith, a 22-year-old children's dance instructor who became profoundly ill in 2007 after eating a hamburger contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. What began as a bad stomach ache turned into more than two years of excruciating pain and suffering for Ms. Smith, with brain damage, organ failure, and paralysis, and a life that is accurately being described as "shattered." Reporter Michael Moss does an incredible job of exposing the critical, life-threatening gaps that remain in the US food safety system, particularly in the regulation of meat. Big Food producer Cargill is the corporation responsible for the beef that caused Ms. Smith's illness, and their representatives declined to be interviewed by Moss, due to ongoing lawsuits, but Moss has people from USDA, doctors, and food safety experts on the record that USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service was well aware of Cargill's repeated safety violations--which are replicated by other major meat concerns--and that USDA failed to act to correct these violations. Ms. Smith is a terrible, worst-case scenario for living through food poisoning--but food borne illness is an issue that effects one in four Americans with more than 5,000 deaths annually, according to CDC statistics. And the ease with which Ms. Smith was poisoned--and the ease with which all Americans are exposed to similar danger due to poor regulation--is clearly illustrated. The article is a must-read for everyone. (Above: The front page of the Sunday New York Times)
An economic issue, a moral issue, and food poisoning victims visit the Senate
Moss notes that products tainted with E coli. O157:H7 have been banned from sale since 1994, following an outbreak of illnesses from burgers sold by Jack in the Box, which left four children dead, and thousands ill. Ironically, Stephanie Smith is now a client of Bill Marler, the foremost food poisoning attorney in the US, who both sued Jack in the Box after the outbreak, and who was crucial to getting the pathogen classified as a contaminant. Yet the pathogen still routinely turns up in ground beef, causing tens of thousands of illnesses annually. No sum of money can make up for the destruction of Ms. Smith's life (or that of other food poisoning victims)--and yet money is critical here. After being hospitalized in intensive care for months--which included a nine-week induced coma to stop the spasms that were wracking her body as the E. coli pathogens ravaged her nervous system--as well as what will be a lifetime of rehab and therapy--Ms. Smith is facing millions of dollars in medical bills. The entire practice at Marler's firm, Marler Clark, in Seattle, is food borne disease litigation; without Marler's private-sector interventions with major food corporations, US food safety would be in a far worse state then it is today--and the families of outbreak victims would routinely face bankruptcy from medical expenses. But as Ob Fo blogged on Wednesday, Marler doesn't just get settlements for his clients, he's also an activist who's spent years testifying before Congress about the full range of food safety issues, he's funded public information 
campaigns and food safety advocacy groups, and he writes not only Marler Blog, the best food safety blog on the internet, but is also newly publishing Food Safety News, an online journal devoted to the issues. Tomorrow, other Marler clients--victims of food borne disease and their families--and family members of those killed by food poisoning--will be on Capitol Hill, visiting Senators as part of Marler's new Put a Trial Lawyer Out of Business campaign, which calls for the Senate to rapidly pass food safety legislation. (The campaign logo, above; at top of paragraph is Stephanie Smith in the Times)Marler on the record: Food safety is a health care reform issue, and part of social responsibility
In a phone interview yesterday, Marler discussed the general state of food safety in America, as well as his new campaign. He noted that although President Obama has pledged to reform food safety, there is much political pressure put on our elected representatives from Big Ag interests--which frequently get in the way of enacting legislative reform. And elected representatives--especially those in the Senate--are critical for reform. The House passed a landmark food safety Bill in July, and it was a masterpiece of bipartisan political showmanship, as Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) managed to line up companies and interests from across the food industry to get behind the Bill. But without a comparable document in the Senate, food safety remains in the sorry state it existed in before President Obama's election. (Photo is Marler, during one of his many appearances before Congress, testifying about food safety)
"The Senate needs to get a food safety Bill in place beyond fast, and have it be something the president can sign," Marler said. "There's no reason to continue on with our current situation, except for the fact that food producers--people with big monetary interests--bring all their resources to bear each time the topic is raised."
Marler believes that reforming food safety regulations is a win for everyone, even if the moral component of poisoning and killing people is overlooked in favor of the economic component.
"There are repeated polls that now show that consumers have a long memory, and that the public is afraid of food...people remember what's been recalled, what's poisoned people, years after the fact," Marler said. "Every time there's a new food poisoning outbreak, in whatever category, that entire area of food suffers economically. And the rest of the economy suffers in response, from truckers to packagers to distributors to restaurants to markets...."
As just one example, Marler came up with an economic estimate during the peanut butter salmonella outbreak of last Fall (due to tainted peanut butter from Peanut Butter Corporation of America) that showed that the economic loss was about a billion dollars, due not only to thousands of products being recalled in everything from breakfast bars to federal school lunch programs and foods sent to the Armed Forces--but also to ongoing consumer fear of buying any kind of peanut butter.
"But beyond economics, it is a moral issue," Marler said. "We need to be responsible as a society. You have people dying from eating bad food, mothers and fathers, grandparents, little kids---and it's completely avoidable with better regulation. And then you have people like Stephanie Smith, whose life is permanently changed. How is food safety still not the number one issue?"
A savvy analyst of politics, Marler also noted that food safety is a bipartisan topic. "Food safety effects everyone, there's no way to break it down in terms of political party. Pathogens don't care whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. Getting food safety reformed is a big win across the board," Marler said.
Marler added that it's also impossible to reform health care without removing the unnecessary economic burdens of avoidable illnesses from food borne pathogens, which is something he doesn't think the Obama administration is taking seriously enough.
"The Food Safety Working Group is moving in the right direction, but we need much better regulations and enforcement," Marler said, "Plain and simple. And how can health care be reformed when there's a whole category of preventable illnesses that's not being addressed? It's all connected."
So what does Marler make of the fact that Dr. Jerold Mande, a cancer specialist, is currently running USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, which is the monitoring arm for meat, poultry and eggs--and which, in 2007, was critically involved with not enforcing regulations and inspections, that led to Stephanie Smith's illness? Dr. Mande is the Obama appointee at FSIS, but he's second in command; the Deputy Secretary position has been open for more than a year, with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack citing conflict-of-interest issues as the reason for no appointee.
"Don't get me started," Marler said. "That conversation could last for a week." A few unprintable comments followed.
An issue with a Titanic scope...and a pledge from the President
On March 14, during his weekly radio and Internet address, President Obama called the fact that the government fails to inspect more than 95 percent of food processing plants "a hazard to public health.""Food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president, but as a parent," President Obama said. And he added the critical observation:
"We are a nation built on the strength of individual initiative. But there are certain things that we can't do on our own. There are certain things that only a government can do. And one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat, and the medicines we take, are safe and don't cause us harm."
President Obama is very serious about food safety--he's done more to address the subject than any president in decades, especially with the the creation of the White House's advisory Food Safety Working Group, which is co-chaired by Sec. Vilsack, Vice President Joe Biden, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. But many of the critical issues are literally out of the President's hands--and the hands of Cabinet Secretaries, the USDA and the FDA--without new legislation.
And as for the New York Times story? Marler is thrilled that food safety is getting attention in big media, because it's the kind of thing that makes legislators take action, as well as makes consumers aware that they need to be very, very careful with their choices of food. Stephanie Smith is the second gravely ill Marler client to be in a national newspaper recently; Linda Rivera, a Nevada resident who became shockingly ill from eating just a few spoonfuls of E. coli-tainted Nestle Toll House cookie dough, was profiled on the front page of the Washington Post on September 1. Marler is seeking to get her financial compensation, too. Nestle is currently paying Ms. Rivera's massive medical bills while the suit approaches final settlement--which again brings in the health care reform issues. Under our current structure, Ms. Rivera is no longer insurable.
"These are front-page stories because our food safety system is like the Titanic," Marler said. "We've been re-arranging deck chairs while the boat sinks. It's time for real, lasting change with better regulations and better enforcement."
Required viewing? Yes.
Tomorrow, during their trip to Capitol Hill, the army of Marler clients who have been harmed by preventable food borne diseases--and family members of the dead--will be handing out t-shirts to Senators that have Marler's slogan Put a Trial Lawyer Out of Business emblazoned on the front, and it can only be hoped that the message will finally be taken seriously, because the President is correct: There are certain things only a government can do, and ensuring the safety of food is one of these. The video below, about another Marler client, Abby Fenstermaker of Ohio, is difficult to watch (Abby, in photo above). Abby was seven years old when she died not from eating a contaminated hamburger, but from getting infected by the E. coli bug that had put her grandfather in the hospital. The tainted burger that Grandpa Fenstermaker ate was made with ground beef that was the subject of a 95,000 pound Class I (you could die) recall by the FSIS. Victims with secondary infections from E. coli poisonings are currently at about fifteen percent, a little-known fact about tainted meat. You don't even have to eat it to die from it. The video should be required viewing on the Senate floor--as a reminder for anyone not paying attention--that food safety issues need to be addressed immediately.*As part of Michael Moss's investigative report, the New York Times has made 106 pages of incredibly disturbing background documents available here, including slaughterhouse log sheets, and hazardous activity citation letters from USDA to Cargill (which Cargill ignored).
*Photos: Stephanie Smith by Ben Garvin/New York Times, Abby Fenstermaker courtesy of her family, Marler photo by Obama Foodorama; President Obama from Getty/pool.
*Disclosure: Marler has blogged here at Obama Foodorama; and Ob Fo has blogged at Marler Blog, and will be writing for Food Safety News, part of the personal aesthetic of community service.
