Farm to Fatal: Food for Thought
Is our food safe? Would you know if it is? Follow UCLA undergrads as they explore a dozen foodborne outbreaks and their consequences.
In Farm to Fatal, twelve different outbreaks illuminate the biology of foodborne illness, the complexity of modern food safety regulation, and the details of how we make food safe... or fail to. In Winter 2025, UCLA undergrads in the Human Biology and Society major set out to explore the intricacies of food safety in the US. Each group explored an outbreak over the last 30 years, diving into the details of the bacteriology, the illness and the treatments on the one hand, and the insanely complex system of governance, audit, oversight, lawsuits and regulations. Dive into every corner of the food safety world, from e. Coli to Hepatitis A, from South Africa to Arizona, from the challenge of regulating raw milk to the difficulties of cleaning tanker trucks, from the "sewer state" to problem of "organized non-knowledge". Across the episodes students find a new respect for the challenge of governing food, the problems with the existing system, and also the need to defend it.
Farm to Fatal: Food for Thought
Latest Episodes
Introduction: Farm to Fatal. Food for Thought
A short introduction to the podcast series, by Christopher Kelty of the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA. Music in this intro by Ween.
Salsification! The 2003 Hepatitis A Outbreak
A beloved family-friendly restaurant turns out to be not-so-friendly after all — it was supposed to be a dinner, not a funeral. 4 Deaths. over 650 incidents of illness. Official cause still unknown. In the fall of 2003, the ...
E.Coli: The Mystery Romaines
Remember when you had really nasty food poisoning at the same time grocery stores were issuing recalls and restaurants were taking items off their menus? Ever wonder why outbreaks of Salmonella. E. coli. or Listeria make headlines at least once...
Ready-To-Eat: Justice beyond the numbers in the 2017 Listeria outbreak
The 2017-2018 listeriosis outbreak in South Africa was the largest and deadliest listeria outbreak on record with over 1,000 reported cases of listeriosis and over 200 deaths. The Department of Health traced the source of the outbreak to...
The Sleepover Symposium: the 2013 STEC outbreak
In this sleepover-style podcast, two girls explore the 2011 Shiga toxin-producing E. coli outbreak in Germany and France. They dive into the mystery of the contamination’s source. Was it Egyptian seeds, German sprouting, or irrigation water?...