Preempting Food Safety: An Examination of USDA Rulemaking and Its E.coli O157:H7 Policy in Light of Estate of Kriefall ex rel. Kriefall v. Excel Corporation

This article will use the Kriefall decision to examine USDA rulemaking and its still-evolving E. coli 0157:H7 policy. Part II of the article will briefly describe the development and implementation of the USDA E. coli 0157:H7 policy as a reaction to an enormous and widely-publicized outbreak of E. coli infections that occurred in 1993-the so-called Jack in the Box outbreak. Following the outbreak, E. coli 0157:H7 was declared by USDA to be an adulterant per se according to FMIA. It was also at this time that the first steps were taken by USDA to move from a "command and control" inspection model to the current "science-based" Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) model.