Food Contamination And Poisoning

Recalling the muckraking food-industry exposes of almost a century ago, President Clinton on Saturday announced a new system for guarding against deadly bacteria in meat and poultry by relying more on scientific testing and less on the touch, sight and smell of federal inspectors. The responsibility for designing and implementing the new system--and its eventual cost of perhaps $100 million a year--will fall mainly on private industry.

Many years after he wrote his best-selling novel "The Jungle," social reformer Upton Sinclair observed: "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." The blow to the public's stomach was so acute in 1906 that Congress enacted its first pure-food laws and meat inspection system.

Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto called an emergency meeting of health, education and agriculture officials as the number of victims in a food poisoning outbreak neared 6,000, most of them children. The outbreak of a strain of E. coli bacteria is Japan's worst bout of food poisoning in almost a decade. Officials suspect most of the victims ate tainted cafeteria food at 53 public schools in Sakai, about 265 miles southwest of Tokyo.

The sushi knives were sharpened, the wooden counter was immaculate, and the glistening slabs of fish were arrayed with an artful eye for color. But sushi chef Hirofumi Gusoku stood glumly in an empty restaurant watching his expensive delicacies slowly spoil. The worst food poisoning outbreak in more than a decade has made the Japanese lose their appetite for sushi, even though there is no evidence to indict Japan's trademark cuisine.

Contaminated school lunches may have sickened as many as 1,228 elementary school children in central Japan since Friday, a health official said Sunday. Ninety-three of the children have been hospitalized. Officials suspect that children from 40 elementary schools in the city of Sakai were poisoned by E. coli--the same strain of bacteria suspected in hundreds of similar cases nationwide since May.

Sakai, the city hardest hit by Japan's food poisoning outbreak, ordered testing of teachers and its schools' lunch staffs Sunday in hope of stopping the sickness from spreading. Japanese health officials suspect tainted school lunches caused the outbreak of E. coli bacteria that has killed seven people and put hundreds in the hospital. They have yet to pinpoint specific foods.

Public health authorities snapped into action Monday to tackle a virulent strain of bacteria that has sickened at least 6,333 people in southern Japan, most of them children believed to have contracted acute food poisoning from their school lunches. The culprit in Japan's worst food poisoning outbreak in a decade is the same strain of E. coli bacteria that tainted American hamburgers in the West in 1993, killing four people and making about 500 others ill.

A mother and son alleging to have found a rotten tooth in a burrito purchased at the Green Burrito restaurant in La Habra have sued for an unspecified amount of money in Orange County Superior Court. Irene and David Salvanera of La Habra allege in the suit that David bit into what he thought was a bone, said David Nisson, attorney representing the plaintiffs.

Poultry slaughter and processing in the United States spread dangerous bacteria, according to a study by a consumer group that described poultry carcasses swimming in a "fecal soup" of contamination. The Center for Science in the Public Interest said a major source of contamination is the mechanical evisceration process, which sometimes spills intestinal contents all over the body cavity and then transmits the contamination to subsequent birds.

The children of an 82-year-old woman who died a day after eating a McDonald's chicken sandwich filed a lawsuit this week against the fast-food chain, alleging that bacteria from the chicken caused their mother's death, attorneys for the family said. Gladys Fuller's daughter, Karen Fontes, had stopped at a McDonald's on her way home to Mission Viejo on Jan. 19, 1995, to buy chicken nuggets for her son and a sandwich for her mother, Fontes' attorney said. Fuller died about 8:30 p.m.