Somebody had to do it — somebody had to use the death of Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas to make a crass point about the benefits of the vegan lifestyle. And the winner was Jackie Alan Giuliano. Giuliano’s weekly “Healing Our World Commentary” about Thomas was headlined “Can I Supersize that Heart Attack For You?” (though, to be fair, I do not know if Giuliano wrote that headline or if the Environment News Service crafted that).
Most of it was the standard whine against the fast food industry claiming that “fast food burger companies refuse to acknowledge the impact that their diet is having on children and adults around the world. Their diet is killing us.” Of course the reality is that to the extent that consumption of fast food contributes to heart disease and other ailments, it is our own food choices that are killing us. Wendy’s and other chains do not force people to eat high meat, high calorie diets, and in fact most such chains these days offer plenty of healthier fare due to increased competition and awareness about the impact of diet on general health.
But lets focus on just one claim made in passing by Giuliano,
More and more, contaminated meat products are resulting in millions of illnesses each year and estimates are that 7,000 to 8,000 people in the U.S. alone die annually from eating contaminated meat.
This is an outright lie.
First, the estimates that there are upwards of 7,000 to 9,000 deaths from foodborne illness and as many as 70 to 90 million incidents of foodborne disease apply to all foods, not just meat. Take something such as salmonella. Animal rights activists warn consumers about the risk of contracting salmonella from chicken, but according to a CDC study of foodborne illnesses, “in 1999, several large salmonellosis outbreaks were traced to produce vehicles, including unpasteurized orange juice (S. Muenchen) (8), mangos (S. Newport), and raw sprouts (S. Mbandaka).”
The idea that foodborne illness is the same thing as meat-related illnesses is a typical animal rights twisting of the facts.
Second, though, these figures are largely complicated guesswork. These numbers are obtained by looking at reports of specific foodborne illnesses in a handful of U.S. cities. A 1998 report on food safety prepared by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine said of these estimates,
The frequently cited annual estimate of foodborne disease (up to 81 million cases) and 9,000 associated deaths are based on assumptions that do not necessarily reflect the current national foodborne disease problem. Those estimates must be qualified for two reasons. First, no comprehensive population-based studies of gastrointestinal illness in the community have attempted to determine what proportion of these illnesses is due to consumption of contaminated food and what proportion is from other sources. Second, foodborne illness can cause clinical conditions not characterized by gastrointestinal symptoms, such as congenital toxoplasmosis, hemolytic uermic syndrome, salmonella-associated septicemia, and invasive Listeria infections (Morris and Potter, 1997).
Foodborne illness may be far less serious or much more of a problem, but these estimates are little more than a national guess at the incidence of such illnesses.
Sources:
Preliminary FoodNet Data on the Incidence of Foodborne Illnesses — Selected Sites, United States, 1999. Centers for Disease Control, March 17, 2000.
Ensuring Safe Food: From Production to Consumption. Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, National Academy Press, 1998, pp.55.
Can I Supersize that Heart Attack for You? Jackie Alan Giuliano, Environment News Service, January 11, 2002.