He helped make burgers safer. Now hes fighting food poisoning again

After focusing on E. coli cases tied to hamburger from 1993 to 2002, Marler watched as new regulatory structures brought contamination under control, with federal recalls dropping from 23 million pounds in 2002 to just 181,000 pounds by 2006. Then came a shocking reversal: "Starting in the spring of 2007, there was an explosion of bad beef." In just 15 months, nearly 40 million pounds of E. coli-contaminated beef was recalled—nearly twenty thousand tons. "Hundreds were sickened and I am back in the beef business." Marler explores numerous theories for the dramatic resurgence: complacency among meat processors who relaxed testing after years of improvement; drought conditions creating fecal dust in slaughtering plants; excessive rainfall causing muddy feedlot pens; the proliferation of ethanol plants next to feedlots producing distiller's grains as cattle feed; immigration crackdowns replacing experienced workers with unskilled labor from homeless missions; and even Darwinian adaptation where E. coli evolved to resist detection. "In short, no one yet really knows why my firm is so busy," he admits. "Cows have not changed. Feedlots have not changed. Slaughterhouses have not changed. Inspections and government regulations have not changed. Supermarkets have not changed. All that has changed is that kids are getting sick again. And that has to change." The sudden reversal after five years of marked decline underscores how fragile food safety progress can be and how quickly gains can disappear without sustained vigilance.