CHICAGO (CBS) — Warmer temperatures will impact food supply and safety, experts warn as E. coli outbreak hits McDonald’s Quarter pounders.
Experts say pathogens – the bacteria that can make us sick – change with the weather.
“It’s an adaptation due to climate change,” says Pratik Banerjee, who teaches food safety at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “and some of these adaptations are not good.”
Banerjee is currently researching the impact of climate on food supply.
“There is no magic wand that could be there and the food would be absolutely safe, right?” he said. “So the goal is to reduce the risk.”
Similar research is taking place at the Institute for Food Safety at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
“This disrupts a lot of the larger ecosystem in terms of how microorganisms behave,” says Dr. Alvin Lee, head of IFSH.
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, chopped onions placed on Quarter Pounders are the likely source of the E. coli contamination that led to the McDonald’s outbreak. According to those contacted by CBS News Chicago for this story, the McDonald’s outbreak is a reminder that climate change is real.
“People who don’t believe in global warming will eventually believe in global warming,” says attorney Bill Marler of Marler Clark, The Food Safety Law Firm, “because there are a lot of studies coming out now showing that certain pathogens such as E. coli, salmonella and campylobacter adapt better to a heated environment than we do.”
Marler has represented outbreak victims across the country as a foodborne illness attorney for decades. He said some pathogens that contaminate food are even emerging in the U.S. for the first time, thanks to climate change.
“There are insects in the United States that we’ve never seen before. We never used to think of Cyclospora as a bacterial or viral problem. Now we see it all the time in the United States, and that’s because temperatures are rising,” said he. . “It used to be a South American problem. Now it’s an American problem.”
Marler said the industry must make changes to keep up because changing temperatures affect pathogens in the food supply.
“We have to adapt, and we have to adapt now,” he said. “The FDA and industry are being caught flat-footed.”
But Banerjee said that while scientists don’t have all the answers yet, the work happening now at UIUC should soon make a difference.
“The focus of my own research is to understand how the pathogens adapt to these situations, and what is the outcome of that adaptation,” he said.
One of Banerjee’s studies is one in which E. coli bacterial cells were exposed to lettuce leaf cells in refrigerated conditions and then observed to find out what the cooling did for infecting mammalian cells.
