Tainted Eggs and Food Safety

The massive egg recall gets bigger. We look at what’s going on in the hen house and with American food safety.

Nearly 150,000 cases of egg-born salmonella in the United States are recorded every year, and the very latest FDA regulations don’t require hens to be vaccinated for it.

It would cost a penny an egg maybe - and we don’t demand it. In the U.K., it's standard — and it cut salmonella there by 97 percent.

Why not here? It’s just one of the mysteries as the great egg recall of 2010 rolls on. Half a billion eggs called back.  Some very bad players are in the story — and maybe a bad system.

No "sunny-side up" here. Not right now. We looking at the great egg recall, and food safety in America.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:

Jill Richardson, sustainable food activist and blogger at La Vida Locavore. Her 2009 book is Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do To Fix It. Read her August 25 article on the egg recall on Alternet.com.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of the Food Safety Program at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Her CNN article "Time to Unscramble Food Safety System," appeared on August 25.

Stephen Herbruck, president of Herbruck's Poultry Ranch in Saranac, Michigan. Herbruck's has over 5 million hens and produces 60 percent of Michigan's eggs.