1985
1985 California listeriosis outbreak in Queso blanco in Southern California. The largest number of food poisoning deaths recorded in U.S. history since the CDC began keeping records in 1970. is traced to Mexican-style soft cheese. There were 52 deaths, including 19 stillbirths and 10 infant deaths. Jalisco Cheese produced the contaminated cheese.[2][14]
1997
Hepatitis A on frozen strawberries from Andrew & Williamson Sales Co. of San Diego, California. The strawberries were grown in Baja California, Mexico and processed by A&W. Thousands of students from Arizona, California, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, and Tennessee may have been exposed to the virus from eating strawberries in school lunches. Over 2.6 million pounds of strawberries were recalled.[22]
1997 E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef from Hudson Foods Company of Rogers, Arkansas. Burger King was the largest client. The plant was in Columbus, Nebraska. The company recalled over 25 million pounds of ground beef it had manufactured, in the second largest recall in history.
1999
Salmonella in unpasteurized orange juice from Sun Orchard in Arizona. They imported orange juice from Mexico in a tanker cooled with contaminated ice.[23]
2003
The 2003 United States hepatitis A outbreak was the worst hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history, more than 660 people infected including four fatalities. The infection was from green onions served at Chi-Chi's restaurants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.[32][33]
2006
E. coli O157:H7 from Taco Bell in South Plainfield, New Jersey and Long Island. 39 people in central New Jersey and on Long Island were sickened and suffered from hemolytic uremic syndrome.[34] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at first believed the E. coli O157:H7 to be in the green onions. The FDA on December 13, 2006 said it could not confirm that scallions were the cause of the problem, as previously suspected, and that it was not ruling out any food as a possible culprit. It was later suspected that infected lettuce was the cause.[35] Even though the culprit turned out to be a produce other than green onions, Taco Bell, in a public relations disaster, fingered a California-based green onion supplier as the source of the E. coli and then eliminated all green onions from its menu (while still serving lettuce). As a result, a lawsuit is currently pending against Taco Bell.
2006 North American E. coli outbreak. E. coli O157:H7 in bagged spinach packaged by Natural Selection Foods and most likely supplied by Earthbound Farm in San Juan Bautista. 3 dead, and 198 people reported sickened by the outbreak across 25 US States,[36] and 1 person reported sickened by the outbreak in Ontario.[37]
2008
2008 United States salmonellosis outbreak. As of August 28, 2008, from April 10, 2008, the rare Saintpaul serotype of Salmonella enterica caused at least 1442 cases of salmonellosis food poisoning in 43 states throughout the United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada. As of July 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspects that the contaminated food product is a common ingredient in fresh salsa, such as raw tomato, fresh jalapeño pepper, fresh serrano pepper, and fresh cilantro. It is the largest reported salmonellosis outbreak in the United States since 1985. During a House subcommittee hearing into food supply safety and the recent salmonella contamination, a top federal official told panel members that agencies have found the source of the contamination after it showed up in yet another batch of Mexican-grown peppers. Adam Acheson, Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner for foods, said the FDA tracked the salmonella positive test to serrano peppers and irrigation water at a packing facility in Nuevo León, Mexico, and a grower in Tamaulipas. New Mexico and Texas were proportionally the hardest hit by far, with 49.7 and 16.1 reported cases per million, respectively. The greatest number of reported cases have occurred in Texas (384 reported cases), New Mexico (98), Illinois (100), and Arizona (49).[46] There have been at least 203 reported hospitalizations linked to the outbreak, it has caused at least one death, and it may have been a contributing factor in at least one additional death.[47] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains that "it is likely many more illnesses have occurred than those reported." If applying a previous CDC estimated ratio of non-reported salmonellosis cases to reported cases (38.6:1), one would arrive at an estimated 40,273 illnesses from this outbreak.[48]
