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
Hitchin' a Ride: the 1994 Schwan's Salmonella Outbreak
Life is seemingly perfect in the quiet town of Marshall Minnesota, with its gentle rolling hills and kind, hard-working people. Unassuming. Certainly not the place for national news ... Yet it serves as the setting for one of the biggest salmonella outbreaks in the US Not from chicken or maybe even eggs, rather, America's favorite dessert: Ice Cream.
Our episode follows the story of Schwan's Ice Cream, which was known for its excellence in quality and trust amongst its customers. This 1994 outbreak of Salmonella shook that trust that had been built over the prior decades, demonstrating the necessary actions that liable parties must take in re-establishing that trust. This was also a landmark case in laying the foundation of real governmental regulation over meat, poultry, and dairy products. With the outbreak being caused by fully preventable actions, this is a story of trying to — if we've established thisnow over 3 decades ago, why are food-born illnesses still prevalent today? It is both our hope and our goal to establish the reasoning for that throughout the episode. We hope you enjoy it!
Produced by Syndey Hahn, Joseph Lee and Fernanda Madraza
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.