 Samantha Bernstein |
Samantha Bernstein is a Seattle resident whose younger sisters were sickened in 1996 by E. coli in triple-washed mesclun lettuce.
While 7-year-old Chelsea Bernstein was hospitalized for four days, 3-year-old Haylee Bernstein’s illness was so severe that she stayed in the hospital for 14 weeks. Haylee was in critical condition, suffering injury to her pancreas and nearly losing her eyesight. She continues to experience the long-term effects of her illness, including diabetes, visual deficit, reduced kidney function, and learning disabilities.
Inspired by her sisters’ plight, Samantha now works as a legal assistant at a law firm dedicated to giving a voice to victims of foodborne illness. She hopes that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Food Safety Modernization Act will be fully and quickly implemented to lessen the risk of lifelong illness from food.
Related video: Haylee Bernstein's story
Testimony by Samantha Bernstein
In June of 1996, my mother prepared a salad for my two little sisters featuring “triple-washed, ready-to-eat” mesclun lettuce. After eating it, both were stricken by severe cramps, vomiting and diarrhea, caused by E. coli O157:H7 infections.
Chelsea soon recovered, but Haylee, who was just 3 years old at the time, fell critically ill with hemolytic uremic syndrome, a serious disorder resulting from the infection, and spent 15 weeks fighting for her life. She suffered retinal hemorrhages, pneumonia, and rectal prolapse. A tennis-ball-sized brain hemorrhage necessitated emergency surgery, which caused blindness for weeks and left her with a life-long visual deficiency. She left the hospital insulin-dependent, and on seven medications taken twice a day. Reporters flocked to our home. Nationwide, people were touched–and alarmed–by her ordeal.
I’ll never forget seeing Haylee comatose and connected to machines. We all asked ourselves, How could this happen? Our parents knew the hazards of tainted/undercooked meat—but lettuce marked as triple-washed? We were shocked to learn that the greens implicated in my sisters’ illnesses had been grown at a farm not registered with the state as a processor and processed with unchlorinated water in an exposed stainless steel tub located less than 100 feet away from cattle. The Food and Drug Administration found that the well that supplied the wash-water was 20 feet from a cattle pen, the filter had been disconnected, and no bacterial testing was done. Strong safety standards for agricultural water, if followed and enforced, could have prevented my sisters’ illnesses. I urge you to put them in place quickly and enforce them vigilantly.
Activism and educating others about foodborne illnesses became the key to my recovery from this trauma. Like most Americans, I considered our food supply the world’s safest, but now I know there is much room for improvement. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act provides us with some of the tools needed to make produce safer.
I currently work at a law firm dedicated to giving victims of foodborne illness a strong voice. I know firsthand that the days, weeks, months, and years following a foodborne infection offer an entirely new set of challenges for an estimated 48 million people a year. While I hope the time spent in the office makes life just a little better for another family like mine, I know there is so much that needs to be done.
I am working to broaden my perspective, and am focused on becoming a trusted voice in the consumer protection community. I count myself as one of many food safety advocates who not only want justice for those sickened but who want to see the number of victims drastically reduced. I believe that a fully implemented Food Safety Modernization Act makes this lofty goal achievable. The needless risk for consumers of “ready to eat” products must be eliminated. I applaud the FDA for the release of the preventive controls rule, which will apply to fresh-cut produce, but urge the agency to require environmental and product testing of processed foods where appropriate. Without full implementation of the law and compliance by food manufacturers, I know that someone else’s sister or brother is still at risk.
In January 2011, President Barack Obama signed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) into law, signaling the first major update to our nation’s food safety oversight framework since the Great Depression. Despite widespread support for the legislation and its implementation, the Obama administration still has not issued all of the proposed rules under FSMA.
More infoThe Pew Charitable Trusts applauds Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) for her efforts to strengthen food safety protections under the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, and provide grant funding to help school cafeterias across the nation upgrade their equipment to serve healthy, appealing meals to millions of school children. Funding for both programs was included in a larger bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.
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More infoThe Pew Charitable Trusts commends Representative Tom Latham (R-IA) for his leadership in securing approximately $27 million for food safety in the House appropriations bill funding the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA. The new money would help the FDA protect millions of Americans from the dangers of foodborne illnesses and strengthen consumer confidence in the food supply.
More infoAs a pediatrician, my No. 1 concern is to keep children safe and healthy. Inside the walls of my office, I can provide services and counseling to help do just that, whether by giving an infant her first childhood vaccine, providing a mental health screening to an adolescent patient or counseling parents about how to keep their homes as safe as possible. Unfortunately, there are some threats to children's health that are beyond my control, including the food they consume.
More infoCDC Data Show Alarmingly High Rate of Listeria Infections for Expectant MomsFrom 2004 2009, 29 percent of cases during pregnancy ended in miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death Data collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Foodborne
More infoDuring a 15-year span beginning in the mid-1990s, infections in the United States from the pathogen vibrio have increased threefold, according to data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.
More info"The Food and Drug Administration will not reduce food inspections because of budget cuts, despite warning earlier that it could be forced to eliminate thousands of inspections by Sept. 30."
More info"Twenty-two weeks. That’s how long it took federal health officials to determine the contaminated food source after the first person was infected in a 2011 outbreak of salmonella that swept across 34 states, sickened 136 people and led to one of the largest national recalls of ground turkey."
More infoA multistate outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg infections linked to ground turkey in 2011 sickened 136 people, causing 37 hospitalizations and one death. The Pew Charitable Trusts' analysis of the outbreak found numerous inadequacies in the foodborne illness surveillance system that, if addressed, could help to prevent illnesses and, in some cases, deaths.
More infoAn examination of a Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak linked to ground turkey illustrates that health authorities must be more aggressive in their efforts to detect and respond to foodborne illnesses, according to a new report by The Pew Charitable Trusts, titled “Too Slow: An Analysis of the 2011 Salmonella Ground Turkey Outbreak and Recommendations for Improving Detection and Response.” In all, the contaminated food sickened a reported 136 people in the United States, hospitalized 37 and killed one, according to government data.
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More infoMy name is Jennifer Exley, and I reside in Centennial, Colorado. I am the daughter of Herbert Stevens, who was deeply impacted by listeria-contaminated cantaloupe in August 2011. As you well know, 147 people were sickened and 33 people died in that outbreak — the deadliest in 25 years. My father was one of the so-called lucky survivors. His health and quality of life was, and remains, seriously affected because of something he ate.
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