With the world as it is, there is no surprise that more and more outbreaks of illness and other harmful things to a person’s health have become more and more common. Our food has been tainted with chemicals of all sorts, some of which have been proven to cause cancer and other disorders, while others have not even been around long enough to measure if they have been harmful to our health or not. Livestock has been pumped full of hormones and other chemicals which have also been proven to be harmful to people’s health in all kinds of ways. It seems as if there is really no place to turn, well other than buying organic (but, we all know how expensive that can be.) It seems as if, with all the industrial farming going on in the country, that it has resulted in haphazard care when it comes to making sure the food is safe for human consumption. There have been numerous cases over the years that have proven this fact, and here are some of the most serious ones that we have seen during our lifetime:
Typhoid outbreak in the United Kingdom (1964)
This Typhoid outbreak was one of the most serious foodborne outbreaks that have been seen in the industrialized, modernized Western world. The infection stemmed from contaminated corned beef, which is one of the most popular meat dishes in the area. The corned beef was imported from Argentina, and resulted in about 400 cases of Typhoid Fever, which was the largest outbreak the United Kingdom had experienced in quite some time. The outbreak began with one contaminated can of corned beef, which then contaminated a meat slicer in the town of Aberdeen, which then contaminated every other meat that was sliced by the slicer. The outbreaks did not cause any deaths, but it did lead to serious changes to the food laws in Great Britain.
E-coli outbreak in the United States (2006)
The E-coli outbreak in the United States was one of the largest ones that the country had seen in decades. The original outbreak was spread through lettuce, spinach and alfalfa, among some other vegetables. The tainted produce was traced back to one single farm that used to be a cattle farm, but then had been leased to a person to grow the said vegetables. The veggies were then tainted by the manure and formed e-coli bacteria. 5 people died, and hundreds became ill.
Listeriosis outbreak in the United States (2011)
Cantaloupes were to blame for this outbreak, and it killed more than 30 people.
Paul is a freelance writer for all kinds of publications, from online to print. His work has been featured in many medical publications and he writes a lot about the importance of critical illness insurance. One of the most common questions his readers ask him is: should I get a critical illness cover quote?
