A teenage runaway tries his hand at migrant work and becomes one of the most powerful food safety lawyers in the world

At 16, Bill Marler ran away from home to become a migrant worker in Washington State, living in squalid cabins, hitchhiking to farms, and spraying chemicals on plants "without a shirt on, without a respirator without anything." His lowest point came when he lost work and survived a week on a five-pound sack of pancake flour. "It has changed my perspective on pancakes I have to admit," he tells host Chitra Ragavan. "Anytime pancakes come up as something for breakfast, my children have had to hear my pancake story." That experience gave Marler lifelong empathy for migrant workers and drove him to college and law school. In 1993, a former slip-and-fall client called about her friend's E. coli-sick child—launching his food safety career. "From 1993, Jack in the Box until early 2000s, 99% of my law firm revenue was E.coli cases linked to hamburger," he explains. "Because of a combination of litigation and legislation...I haven't had many E.coli cases linked to hamburger at all." Reflecting on COVID-19's exposure of meatpacking dangers, Marler connects it to his farmworker past: "It's not just to protect the worker, which I think is the moral thing to do, but it's also to frankly protect yourself. And sometimes profits are the focus and we become so shortsighted." His 21-year-old daughter protesting in Seattle teaches him he may be "perhaps not paying attention to the things that need to be paid attention to today."