Thursday, November 11, 2010

Jack in the Burger

One thing that really caught my eye in chapter nine was the increase in children being sickened all of a sudden after eating burgers that were inadequelty cooked in a jack in a box restuarant. Hundreds of people got sick and most of which were young kids. Amoung the first to be sickened was Lauren Beth Rudolph. She was just one of many kids who were going through bloody diarrhea and sharp stomach pain. Sadly she passed away just a few days before christmas in her mothers arms at the young age of 6 years old.
This really got to me and you would think that after a childs death the contaminated food would be vanished but signs of contamination still floated around years after. "In the eight years since the Jack in the Box outbrake, approximately half a million Americans , the majority of them children, have been made ill by E. coli 0157:H7. Thousands have been hospitalized, and hundreds have died." (Schlosser,199). Main reason why this topic took my interest was because of how bad this bacteria really is. The company, Vons Companies, Inc, did in fact recall the contaminated beef but at a slow pace. Kids ultimately got sick anyway but issues like this should be taken care of as soon as possible and with greater consideration for the sake of childrens health.

7 comments:

  1. I agree with you that when it was first sited, it should have been stopped right there and then. Many contaminated food is never even recalled when most of it is consumed, that is when we learn about it. Many companies dont even want to adress it publicly. Why were the kids only getting sick? Why not the adults?

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  2. I felt the same way when I read about the little girl who ate the hamburger from Jack In the Box. She was so young and had her whole life ahead of her. You never think that you can get such a fatal illness from a hamburger that you order from a common and well known restaurant. Since E.Coli affects so many people and can cause fatal consequences meat companies should develop a better system at tracking and inspecting the meat to make sure that nobody else gets hurt.

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  3. Well of course adults also got sick as well but with much stronger immune systems, the lucky ones eventually overcame the ordeal, for better or worse. My main focus was the effects that this potentially lethal bacteria had on kids. It seemed to kill have more kids than adults. Im sure that the number of adults who died due to the contaminated burgers are high as well in terms of numbers but the significance in a child dieing may impact other readers more profoundly.

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  4. I find it amazing how many people continue to eat these types of food despite the fact that they are aware of this health issues they could bring. I completely agree with you when you mentioned that this issue had been taken care at the moment. I believe that a death of a child it’s simply one too many and it should be more than enough reason to bring this issue to an absolute end.

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  5. Well I guess we wrote about the same thing, because this is what caught my attention as well more people were getting sick but most of them were sick. I feel like if things like this happens why not just shut the placed down until the meat is fully ready or us the people who eat this why not stop going because at the end of the day we are the one walking in the restaurant buying the food and eating it.

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  6. That was so sad how she died. It was so unfair to her because she was so young and it was all because of one sickening hamburger. Meatpacking industries should really not wait till the whole nations starts dying for them to make a change, this isnt the first time it happens and certainly not the last.

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  7. Certainly not Katherine but hopefully with the new advances in technology and mandatory improvements at these meat packin plants, we can see better quality beef thats safe for consumption and not have to worry about any bacteria that can potentially kill us. Only time will tell...

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