@Risk

Chicken Pot Pie Salmonella

An article on the front-page of the New York Times last month described the difficulty that industrial food giant ConAgra encountered tracing the source for repeated salmonella bacteria contamination of their Banquet Pot Pies products that sickened 15,000 consumers in 2007.

If you’re unacquainted with salmonella bacteria, consider yourself lucky. According to the Centers for Disease Control, salmonella is the most frequently reported cause of foodborne illness in the US, responsible for 1.4 million cases of gastro-intestinal upset and more than 500 deaths annually. Salmonella bacteria pass from the intestinal tract of a carrier animal (or human) to the next victim via the ingestion of infected fecal matter. 100% gross.

ConAgra, a $12B packaged foods behemoth, sold more than 100 million pot pies last year under their Banquet label alone. Ultimately, ConAgra determined that they were unable to trace, and thus eradicate, the source for salmonella poisoning in their supply chain and manufacturing processes. As a result, they’re now saddling consumers with responsibility for the “kill step” (an industry euphemism for any process designed to wipe out lingering microbes). New packaging on the 69-cent pot pies includes the addition of “food safety instructions” mandating that the product reach an internal temperature of 165° F “as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.”

The upside is that if a consumer can successfully manage to heat their pot pie to a consistent 165° F (confirmed by multiple internal measurements with an accurately calibrated food thermometer), they will eliminate the risk of illness associated with pathogenic contamination. But, in practice, multiple attempts by staffers from the New York Times failed to achieve anything near a consistent internal temperature of 165° F when cooking the pot pies using a variety of methods, including conventional and microwave ovens. In most cases, the pie crust began to burn prior to the internal temperature reaching 140° F.

What’s more, ConAgra’s risk prevention strategy is compromised by recognized consumer behaviors, as well. For instance, according to the USDA, 50% of US homes do not own a food thermometer. Of those that do, a mere 3% use their thermometers when cooking well-known high risk foods, such as hamburger. There are no metrics tracking the temperature measurement of presumably safe packaged foods, such as Banquet Chicken Pot Pies.

ConAgra’s inability to successfully invest a portion of their $2.7B annual profit to eliminate the threat of serious microbial contamination from a list of 25 ingredients in their pot pies – instead opting to place the responsibility for decontaminating the product on the consumer – makes me wonder how many unnecessary illnesses or deaths have to accumulate before the line between profit and responsible corporate behavior is reasonably drawn.