preview

The Food Safety Is A Highly Overlooked Essay

Decent Essays

Food safety is a highly overlooked yet crucial aspect of the food industry, as evident in the deadly 1993 Escherichia Coli outbreak in multiple Jack in the Box locations. Escherichia Coli is prevalent in raw and undercooked ground beef, which is a common food item on the Jack in the Box menu; the bacterial contamination during the slaughtering process of the meat lead to this gut wrenching epidemic (Wiley 2013). The horrific E. coli outbreak could have been prevented if it were not for Jack in the Box’s meat supplier Vons, Foodmaker’s vice president of technical services Ken Dunkley, and Jack in the Box’s President Bob Nungent. The 1993 Jack in the Box E. Coli outbreak could have been prevented firstly if the contaminated meat itself had never set foot in a single Jack in the Box establishment. It was made evident upon an interview with Jack in the Box’s President Bob Nugent that “the testing that was done on that particular batch of meat indicated that it had high levels of E. coli. It is their responsibility to notify us if there’s any potential hazard with a product. We were notified of those high levels of E. coli after the outbreak. So without notification, we couldn’t take any measures to preclude it”. (Benedict 2011). Vons broke the Meat inspection Act, as it is a “federal law that spells out the food codes – it is a breach of warranty to sell or distribute food that is contaminated or adulterated” (Benedict 2011). This initial error on Von’s part gave leeway for

Get Access