The World’s Safest Food 3the last few miles and pulled into their driveway. As I struggled to the
porch, my cellphone rang. While trying to answer the phone, fumble
with keys, and open the front door, I lost consciousness.
What happened next still seems surreal. I remembered staring across
the concrete porch with its brick edging. Nearby were my crumpled
eyeglasses. One side of my face stung from hitting the concrete. I had
no strength to move. I heard a faint voice calling my name, but several
moments passed before I recognized it was Tamara imploring me to pick
up the phone. I mumbled a response but could not locate the phone,
which had fallen beyond my line of sight.
She kept talking, trying to keep me awake to ask my location and call
for help. As she spoke, the cloudiness slowly lifted. I remembered where
I was and noticed I was bleeding. After a couple of minutes, I managed
to lift my head. Before falling, I had unlocked the door. Mustering what
strength I could, I staggered to the bathroom for an experience I hope
to never repeat or even describe. When Monty and Jeanice arrived, the
worst was over. They found me lying on the floor, too exhausted to move.
Never before had I felt so helpless and vulnerable. Still weak, I handed
the phone to Monty and drifted into sleep.
A week went by before all my strength had returned. When I reported
the event to the county’s public health office, they jotted down my infor-
mation and said they would call, but they never did. No one else in our
group fell ill. As is the case with most foodborne illness events with no
medical follow-up, an etiologic agent was never identified. Wanting to
put the whole incident behind me, I let it go. After no recallable food-
borne illnesses until then, I experienced two additional bouts in the next
three years—all in the United States.
Nowadays, we know more about food-related threats than ever before.
As human populations have increased, microscopic organisms that see
us as food (or vacation destinations) have also proliferated. As the mod-
ern food system became part of our surroundings, pathogens did like-
wise. With millions if not billions of years of adaptation, they were not
about to roll over and go extinct.
Starting long before people appeared on Earth, the sole objective of
microbes (and other living organisms) has always been to conquer any