Eat, drink and be wary: Modern foodborne infections and food safety
By Kena Shah, Equity in Health Fellow
A panel at Health Journalism 2025 dove into the inner workings of food safety in the United States from public health and legal standpoints, discussing how journalists can cover the work that public health agencies do while holding them accountable. The panel fully agreed that federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) need to be more transparent in communicating disease outbreaks to the public.
Whether it’s writing stories about “the people behind the food recalls that are protecting our health, those that are getting fired everyday,” or federal agencies “not telling the public” about outbreaks both Jemma Alarcon, director of food safety at LA County Department of Public Health, and Bill Marler, an attorney at Marler Clark, agreed that journalists play a crucial role in alerting the public to food safety issues. Marler highlighted a recent story on an E. coli outbreak that was traced back to one lettuce source as an example of this role.
Both Alarcon and Marler also spoke about the excruciating detail it takes to conduct contact tracing for foodborne illness outbreaks such as salmonella and E. coli.
Alarcon described tracing the oysters that caused norovirus in Los Angeles County to sources in Louisiana and South Korea. She spoke about the extensive work that her department conducts in collaboration with the California Department of Health as well the CDC and the FDA. This collaboration leads to longer processes, and under the current administration, has stalled some work after federal workers were fired.
Alarcon suggests writing stories that hold “agents accountable to high levels of timeliness and effectiveness,” and “that highlight who in Congress is supporting agencies that protect public health.”
Marler used the example of the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) to highlight how businesses sometimes cut corners on food safety in order to sell their products. In the case of PCA, they knew their product contained salmonella, yet they conducted enough tests on different lots so that at least one came back negative, which they then cited for safety.
Marler mentioned that litigation also hasn’t escaped federal cuts. “We now don’t have an Office of Inspector General. And then, of course, the U.S. attorney’s office that used to prosecute these crimes doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.
Both speakers recommend that reporters focus on the silence coming from federal agencies that regulate food safety and challenge them on why they are increasingly forgoing communications on outbreaks that endanger public health.
Kena Shah is a freelance reporter based in Canada.
