Thanks for helping us "S.T.O.P." Foodborne Illness After 10 Years
My twins and I had listeria in 1999. They were newborn babies, and I was a brand new mother of boy/girl twins I couldn’t wait to meet. But I spent my first night as a mother battling sepsis, with a temperature low enough to slow my heartrate and warrant the placement of a giant raft-like “blanket” over my body to warm me up, so my heart and other organs didn’t shut down completely, so I was told in ICU. Meanwhile, my twins fought for their own lives in the NICU, with complications too numerous to list here, although similar to me, one of my twins’ temperatures couldn’t be registered, it was so low. I was given two Polaroid pictures of my twins that a kind nurse taped to my bedrail, but I knew from looking at them that they were suffering, and not being able to be with them, or even talk to their doctors was agony.
It is only through the misfortune of others that we survived, for the nurse that first treated my twins recognized familiar symptoms from babies and mothers she had seen with listeria several years before in another state, where a listeria outbreak had occurred from contaminated cheese. We were extremely lucky as our doctors acted on the nurse’s insights, and quickly prescribed the three strong antibiotics known at the time to work against listeria, which saved our lives. This was truly a miracle considering all three of us survived a strain with a mortality rate of up to 40%.
Although I have followed food safety for years, I am now, 10 years later, fighting for it, and am hoping you will consider making a donation to S.T.O.P. to help this effort. S.T.O.P. has been fighting this battle for 16 years, since 1993, when S.T.O.P.’s President’s 7 year-old son died from eating a hamburger contaminated with e.coli. S.T.O.P. has made so much headway, and they will not “stop” until safer food is a reality; they are close.
Our listeria infection came from meat, and the outbreak my twins’ nurse witnessed, mentioned above, came from cheese. Too many other outbreaks have occurred from common foods that aren’t meant to be heated up or cooked before eating (spinach and peanut products, for example). We all should understand that heat is the only “kill step” that works to get rid of harmful bacteria before consumption. Even washing doesn’t work. Therefore, foods must be tracked “from farm to fork” to understand where or how food becomes contaminated, and to prevent it from occurring in the first place.
Like many other victims, there was nothing I could have done to prevent listeria from entering my body when I ate contaminated food in mid-August of 1999, which then multiplied for many weeks before I luckily went into labor, or else my twins would have most likely been stillborn like the other babies whose mothers consumed the same food I ate. This product was only ever pulled off store shelves after the very rare discovery of the source of the outbreak in late December of that year, when more months passed allowing for even more potential victims and deaths. Most sources of food-borne illness are never even discovered because most food factories and farms are not inspected…either ever if the food is imported, or perhaps at the most only once every 10 years.
Again, S.T.O.P. is fighting for food to be traced from farm/factory all the way to our forks. This is the only way these deadly bacteria can be discovered and stopped before reaching our tables. I appreciate you taking a moment to consider making a donation to this wonderful organization. All donations made to our page by 12/31/09 will be matched by Davidson's Safest Choice Eggs so your donation goes twice as far!
Warm Wishes,
-Trissi, Paul, Chloe and Luke