Dateline NBC reported on fresh food contamination, with emphasis on fresh spinach and lettuce grown in California, and whether irradiation is the answer to ensuring our fresh produce is safe.
"We can say all day long that we have the safest food system in the world," says Seattle attorney Bill Marler, who specializes in cases involving victims of E. coli-contaminated produce. "Well, we don’t. And we have systems that are broken. We have things that need to be fixed."
Marler represents Michelle Matthews, who is suing Dole Foods and Natural Selections/Earthbound Foods to cover her past and future medical bills and her pain and suffering. He says the industry has known about and ignored the problem for years.
"It’s easy in these situations to go, ‘I’m not sure exactly what caused the problem, so there’s nothing I can do. But I’m making a lot of money selling spinach and lettuce in a bag, so I’m going to keep doing that.’ They didn’t take the time to figure out what the problem was," says Marler.