Food Safety Month
Statistics never take into account the trauma or years of suffering that follow foodborne illnesses. While here, at Food safety news, we try to keep you updated on numbers, recalls, and science. We also know that the most important aspect of food safety is protecting life.
How do we get people’s attention and get them to invest in learning and understanding food safety? By showing them the personal stories of those affected.
“When you talk to someone about these stories, you feel the effect, you feel the pain and the pain,” said Dave Theno Fellow Jaime Ragos in 2019-2021 Food safety news. “I know for myself the biggest thing is when I hear that a mother fails a child from Listeria. It could have happened 20 years ago and they still feel the pain of losing this child. “
Dave Theno knew that. It was a childlike sacrifice that changed his life and led him to dedicate his life to food safety.
Theno was Senior Vice President and Chief Food Safety Officer at Jack-in-the-Box in 1993 and was discontinued after the fast food chain was shaken by a massive and fatal outbreak of E. coli O157: H7. Four children died in this outbreak, which has confirmed more than 600 victims infected by undercooked hamburgers. Most of the victims were young children. Many of them suffered severe, lifelong complications that required ongoing medical treatment.
One of the victims was nine-year-old Lauren Beth Rudolph. She died in her mother’s arms on December 28, 1992. Theno carried a photo of Lauren Beth in his wallet from 1993 until his death in 2017 when a rogue wave hit him while swimming in Hawaii.
Lauren Rudolph’s influence on Dave Theno lives on today through the Theno Food Safety Fellowship. The scholarship gives a young food scientist the opportunity to work with the professionals at Stop Foodborne Illness and learn from members of the expanded STOP community about the real health consequences of food safety failures. STOP is a non-profit public health organization that has focused on telling the “why” of food safety with personal stories since 1994.
The scholarship includes accommodation, payment and social benefits; and it requires the scholar to work full-time for STOP and complete a 12-credit online certificate in food safety from Michigan State University (MSU).
Dave Theno Food Safety Fellow 2019-2021, Jaime Ragos, had a unique multidisciplinary undergraduate experience that made her an ideal scholarship holder – she worked in research programs at the University of Tennessee’s Department of Nutrition, Department of Food Science and Technology, and the Department of Food Science and Technology. She was also involved in research at the Smith International Center in Guatemala and North Carolina State University in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Science.
While working as a fellow at STOP, Ragos wanted to understand the personal costs of neglecting food safety. So, with MSU, she created a graduate course for MSU’s online food safety program that specifically focuses on developing a food safety culture. During class, she got food poisoning victims to share their experiences.
“It gives the statistics a face,” said Ragos. “It really gives a face to the pain and suffering someone has been through. In our course, we interviewed a man who got listeria from a frozen dairy product. And now he sees his life as a pre- and post-illness. Because now he is embarrassed in his speech because he now has difficulty speaking and it takes him much longer to leave. “
Ragos hopes that sharing these stories will lead to an improved food safety culture, where individuals and companies are committed to food safety because they know the impact it has on people’s lives.
Ragos is now going to Taiwan as a Fulbright scholar. She is currently applying to medical schools.
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