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
Cargill's Responsibility: the 2011 Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak
In 2011, across 26 states, 136 people were sickened, 37 were hospitalized and one person died. The culprit: Salmonella Heidelberg, contracted through the consumption of contaminated ground turkey from Cargill Meat Solutions based in Springdale, Arkansas.
One meal. That’s all it took for 10-month-old Ruby Jane Lee to go from a happy, exploring baby to a hospital bed, fighting for her life. In 2011, a massive Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak linked to Cargill’s ground turkey sickened 136 people, hospitalized 37, and caused one death —but experts estimate the true toll could be over 4,000 cases. It took 22 weeks before a recall was issued. Why? A broken food safety system that prioritizes corporate profits over consumer protection. Why did the USDA and FSIS fail to act sooner? Budget cuts crippled foodborne illness tracking, and dangerously lax contamination standards allowed nearly 50% of ground turkey to test positive for salmonella. Outdated policies, corporate negligence, and regulatory failures left the public vulnerable. While victims suffered, families were left in the dark, and contaminated meat remained on store shelves. Join us as we investigate the failures of food safety oversight and the growing threat of multidrug-resistant superbugs. We’ll uncover how contamination spreads from farm to table, why it took months to act, and how corporations like Cargill avoid accountability. Don’t assume you’re safe just because you cook your food properly. The system is flawed— and it’s designed to let corporations off the hook. It’s time to demand
change.
Produced by Andrea Musi, Sadhana Jeyakumar, and Ian Kim
These podcast episodes were created by members of the 2025 Winter Capstone course in the Human Biology and Society major at UCLA's Institute for Society and Genetics (https://socgen.ucla.edu/). The faculty sponsor is Christopher Kelty. For questions or concerns email ckelty@ucla.edu.