1. Provide the title of your story or series and the names of the journalists involved.
William Neuman's 2010 Body of Work.
2. List date(s) this work was published or aired.
The stories submitted are:
"An Iowa Egg Farmer and a History of Salmonella," Sept. 21, 2010
"US Rejected Hen Vaccine Despite British Success," Aug. 24, 2010
"In E. Coli Fight, Some Strains Are Largely Ignored," May 26, 2010
"Added to the Recall List: Millions of Frozen Mice," July 29, 2010.
3. Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
"An Iowa Egg Farmer and a History of Salmonella," Sept. 21, 2010. "U.S. Rejected Hen Vaccine Despite British Success," Aug. 24, 2010: These two stories were part of my coverage of the nationwide Salmonella enteritidis outbreak that sickened thousands of people last summer and led to the recall of half a billion eggs from tainted Iowa farms. The August story looked at the failure of federal regulators to require vaccination of laying hens despite evidence that it had been highly effective in stamping out a Salmonella enteritidis epidemic in Great Britain. The story found that regulators had relied on outdated studies and ignored more recent evidence supporting vaccine use. The September story, "An Iowa Egg Farmer and a History of Salmonella," delved into the history of the man at the center of the salmonella crisis, the egg farmer Austin J. DeCoster, and showed that his farms had been linked with some of the earliest and the deadliest egg-related outbreaks of Salmonella enteritidis. It detailed the first known outbreaks of enteritidis tied to eggs, in 1982, which had never been previously reported. It also provided new details about Mr. DeCoster's present-day operations, which included problems with persistent salmonella infestations in his Maine hen houses.
"In E. Coli Fight, Some Strains Are Largely Ignored," May 26, 2010: Federal regulators have been slow to focus attention on a little-known group of toxic E. Coli bacteria now emerging as a significant cause of food-borne illness.
"Added to the Recall List: Millions of Frozen Mice," July 29, 2010: An international salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds in the United States and Great Britain had a surprising source: frozen mice sold to pet owners as food for snakes and other reptiles.
4. Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required?
How did this affect the work? The most document-intensive story was the one on Mr. DeCoster's history of selling tainted eggs. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta provided copies of outbreak investigations from the 1970s and 1980s. State officials in New York, Maine and Maryland also provided large amounts of documents, many of them going back decades. For the story on the salmonella vaccine I used numerous scientific papers from peer-reviewed journals and epidemiological data provided by health authorities in Great Britain. I also used federal register entries and transcripts from Food & Drug Administration hearings, which were available online.
5. Explain types of human sources used.
The story on Mr. DeCoster's history of selling tainted eggs involved dozens of interviews to get at the details of long-ago events. This included people who had worked for the Centers for Disease Control and the health and agriculture departments in several Northeastern states, as far back as the 1970s, as well as nursing home and hospital employees and former associates of Mr. DeCoster or his companies. The stories on the hen vaccine and the tainted mice both involved interviews with public health officials and scientists in Britain. For the tainted mice story, I was able to use the Internet to track down customers of MiceDirect, the company that sold the mice, locating them through comments they had posted online. Key to the E. Coli story was an interview with a young woman who was sickened by a rare strain of the bacteria after eating tainted lettuce at a college salad bar.
6. Results (if any).
N/a.
7. Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
None.
8. Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
There are so many compelling aspects to stories about foodborne illness. Talk to the people who have fallen sick to convey the human cost. Talk to the epidemiologists who do amazing detective work to ferret out the cause of outbreaks. Talk to the scientists looking for cures and solutions. Focus on the regulators, who so often are slow to act, even when the consequences of delay are more sickness.