In 2001, a little boy named Kevin Kowalcyk of 2 1/2 years old was out on vacation with his family like any other american family does in the summer time, during that vacation, him and his family stopped by a hamburger fast food place, afterwards, he developed hemolytic-uremic syndrome because the hamburger was contanimated with E. coli O157:H7, 12 days later after being hospitalized and doctors working tirelessly to save his life, he died. Since then his family has become advocates for food safety, 3 years later they finally obtained a private lawyer to sue the meat company associated with the meat that was contaminated but no success, this family did not even receive an apology or even an acknowledgement of the incident. Its heart-breaking, imagine your child dying because you simply had dinner at a restaurant and trusted the fda and usda to assure it was safe because that is their purpose after all? to assure that food and drugs are safe for human consumption.

His mother since then introduced a law nicknamed after her son Kevin, and this law would give back the usda the power to shut down meat plant and companies who repeatedly have contamination cases. the benefits of this law are as follows:

Requiring the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to identify the pathogens that threaten human health (e.g. Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes).

Requiring the USDA to establish performance standards to reduce the presence of these pathogens in meat and poultry.

Confirming that the USDA has the authority to enforce its own standards by shutting down plants that continually breach basic health standards. Courts have held that the USDA does not have this authority in the absence of explicit authorizing legislation. Now, corporate meat processors did vote against this because they claimed it would raise the price of food and is simply " unecessary" but since when is money more important than life itself? just recently there was a solmanella outbreak in 13 different states, when does this stop? So join me and his family in the pursuit of this law, this affects everyone, everyday, from eating out to grocery shopping, lets help pass this law and bring Kevin some type of justice.