Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Dedication
Introduction
1: Bioterrorism, Cyber Attacks
2: Food Imports
3: Produce
4: Poultry
5: Eggs
6: Beef and Pork
7: Milk
8: Seafood
9: Deli Dangers
10: Outbreaks, Illnesses and Deaths
11: Food Fraud and Tampering
12: Foods We Eat, Others Won’t
13: Unwelcomed Critters in Our Foods
14: GMO – Genetically Modified Organisms
15: Generally Recognized as Safe
16: BPA – Bisphenol A
17: Cottage Food Industry and Your Kitchen
18: Restaurants
19: Government’s Report Card
Epilogue: Sugar, A Legalized Recreational Drug

About the Author

Charles Duncan has been writing non-fiction for the last forty years. He has researched and written documentaries, articles, investigative series, and features exploring a vast array of compelling topics: crime, hazardous chemical dumps, religious cults, discrimination, safety and security violations, and others. Eat, Drink and Be Wary was also the title of Duncan’s most popular television news series, 100 segments on the six o’clock and ten o’clock newscasts, graphically depicting the sorry state of restaurant food safety in Dallas and Fort Worth. His articles have been carried on ABC’s World News Tonight and Good Morning America, scores of radio and TV network affiliate stations, and have been written about in TIME, Newsweek, Texas Monthly, the London Sunday Times, D Magazine, and the Dallas Morning News. His exclusive report on the Palmer Drug Abuse Program prompted follow-up stories by CBS 60 Minutes and ABC’s 20/20 program. He has won a duPont Columbia Silver Baton, an Edward R. Murrow award, Headliners and numerous other national and regional awards. After spending seven years as the investigative reporter for KAKE-TV in Wichita, Kansas, Charles became a Senior Investigative Reporter at WFAA-TV. He later obtained his Texas Private Investigator’s License and operated his own company for many years.

Reviews

Veteran journalist Duncan demonstrates that fears about food safety in the U.S. are not unfounded. Bit by bit, he examines "our enormous food safety problems," the reasons why the government has failed to protect consumers, and the consequences of such lax oversight. Contamination can affect every "phase of our food chain, from the wheat and corn fields, grazing cattle, slaughterhouses, egg farms, and dairies to our oceans and bays." Meanwhile, global imports generally do not receive proper or sufficient inspection, either. The FDA, for example, inspects less than two percent of foods shipped from China (and more than half of Chinese food processing and packaging firms fail that country’s own safety inspections). Chapters on items such as produce, poultry, and eggs highlight similar themes. According to Duncan, the American government drags its feet and has kept secret public information about enforcement, closures, and seizures of food processors, protecting big businesses at the public’s expense. Subsequent discussions on milk, seafood, and processed meats strike cautionary tones as well. . . .Duncan’s work is comprehensive and readers concerned with the safety and reliability of their foods will appreciate his efforts.
*Publishers Weekly*

A much-awarded print and TV journalist takes the U.S. food industry to task. Even the statistics he presents alone will alarm. Every year, 3,000 Americans die and 48 million are sickened by food-borne illnesses. Of the 91 percent of seafood the U.S. imports, only 2 percent is inspected. And on and on. Duncan cites many books, chapters, and verses on every aspect of the food industry, from the possibility of bioterrorism through our food supply and the dangers of delicatessens to GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and restaurant food. Although not collected in any one chapter, his advice proves valuable: eat only prepackaged deli foods; don’t drink raw, unpasteurized milk; and select fish with low to moderate mercury. Who has weakened U.S. food chains? The government (USDA and FDA are the largest agencies), which writes laws to favor industry, not the public, and the D.C. bureaucrats who defund and strip food-safety programs to bare bones. In Duncan’s epilogue, readers will see him preparing for his next documentary foray, against sugar. Extraordinarily well researched—and scary.
*Booklist*

Eat, Drink & Be Wary is a mostly catalog of all the ways food can make us sick, but Charles Duncan concludes with recommendations for making it safer. . . .Charles may be long gone from TV, but it's good seeing that the old watchdog is still on the prowl.
*The Dallas Morning News*

This book is loosely based on Duncan’s long-running Dallas/Fort Worth television news series. Eat, Drink & Be Wary . . . is [a] recommended (and controversial) reading.
*Skagit Valley Herald*

Charles Duncan is the Upton Sinclair of his day, delivering a searing, groundbreaking investigative look into the U.S. food industry that is as important as it is disturbing. Eat, Drink & Be Wary is must reading for consumers and those government inspectors tasked with keeping our food safe. Duncan reveals stunning shortfalls in the quality and inspection of domestically grown and imported foods and herbs that are jaw dropping. This is investigative reporting at its best.
*Peter Van Sant, Correspondent, CBS News*

Charles Duncan has written a lively account of the many chinks in the armor meant to protect the safety of our foods and beverages. Globalization, concentration, industrialization, misuse of antibiotics in food animal production, political power of big agriculture, underfunding and ineffectiveness of regulatory agencies – it’s all here in this informative book by a seasoned journalist.
*Robert S. Lawrence, MD, Director, Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health*

Eat, Drink, & Be Wary exposes the ill-gotten gains of the food industry in exhaustive, sometimes stomach-churning detail. The results may shock or surprise you.
*Ed Bark, former longstanding TV critic of The Dallas Morning News and proprietor of the unclebarky.com TV website since 2006*

Eat, Drink, & Be Wary comes as a rude awakening to the fact that our government is asleep at the wheel in safeguarding our foods. In this book, Charles Duncan has reminded us about the horrifying truth of the deteriorating quality of foods we consume daily. He also informs us, the consumers, as to what we can do to reverse this destructive trend.
*Chensheng Alex Lu, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Environmental Exposure Biology, Harvard School of Public Health*

In Eat, Drink, & Be Wary, Duncan offers us a gruesome panorama of the global food industry, its frailties and its dangers. If we considered food to be a more critical factor in health, we might inspect and care for this system differently. But as Duncan shows, food is but a commodity, inspected and monitored by a lackadaisical political system, created and sold at minimal cost to consumers who are anonymous and replaceable. This book is a quick overview, product by product, crisis by crisis, of the current dangers in our industrial foods.
*Carolyn Smith-Morris, Ph.D., M.S., LPC, Associate Professor, Southern Methodist University*

A great repository of facts for anyone who is concerned about food safety. It is a much needed outcry for transparency in our food production.
*Mark Post, MD, PhD, professor and chair of Physiology, Maastricht University*

Foodborne illnesses and the quality of food production and preparation are major issues in the US. This is a must read for every parent and for anyone interested in their general health. The more knowledgeable we are, the more transparent and accountable the industry must become. The quality of our food should always be held to the highest standards and not allowed to continue to be a form of culinary Russian roulette.
*Bill Macatee, announcer for The NFL on CBS, US Open Tennis, Golf*

In his carefully researched book, Charles M. Duncan comprehensively addresses hazards as they come with our daily food. Based on solid facts, figures, and references, he fascinatingly discusses nutritional safety and security across the board: from bioterrorism over food imports and genetically modified organisms to outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, and others. The book also includes honed criticism of the dispersion of responsibility an the U.S. system of government, as well as practical tips how to mitigate food-related risks in our everyday lives. This work is an excellent contribution to fostering homeland and civil security debates in an all-hazards context, as well as to increasing societal awareness and preparedness.
*Alexander Siedschlag, Ph.D, Professor and Chair of Homeland Security and Public Health Preparedness, The Pennsylvania State University*

For Americans, eating healthy may only be a challenge at the start of our daily routine. Finding a variety of safe, healthy, and available foods impacts the health of us all.  As some of our everyday interactions have been marked with more invasiveness, Duncan brings questions food safety, trends in risk management with nutrition and concerns with the oversight needed to prevent food threats from natural hazards to terrorism. Information on eating safely may be a new top of the food pyramid.
*J. Eric Dietz, PhD, PE, Director, Purdue Homeland Security Institute and Professor, Computer and Information Technology*

Charles Duncan has provided a sobering, and potentially stomach-churning, look at the gaps in our food safety system. Controls on food imports are negligible, domestic controls are too lax, and food producers are taking short-cuts and risks that should alarm every consumer.
*Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO, The Humane Society of the United States*

A must read for policy makers and elected officials – while they are eating! Duncan documents one of the most important crises in America – the safety of our food.
*David A. Sterling, Ph.D., CIH, Professor and Chair Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, Director Doctoral PhD Program, School of Public Health, University of North Texas Health Science Center*

A lot of the information Charles Duncan includes in Eat, Drink, & Be Wary, is scary as hell! However, by reading this book, we will all be better informed about the choices we made and the foods we eat. Thank you Charles and “BON APPETIT” ya’ll!
*Ruta Lee, Canadian actress, Hollywood, CA*

Charles M. Duncan has assembled a significant amount of data on the problems with allowing uninspected and untested food products to enter the marketplace. Duncan outlines the major failures of the Government agencies in allowing healthy food to reach the tabletop.
*John Ubelaker, Ph.D., Southern Methodist University*

Eat, Drink, & Be Wary is a detailed examination of the failure of government oversight agencies to protect consumers from food companies that place profit above everything else. This failure of the agencies that are supposed to oversee the food industries leads to horrible cruelty to farm animals and a polluted food supply. You will cry and, if you have a dark sense of humor, you will laugh. My hope is that you will also be spurred to action.
*Bruce Friedrich, director, Farm Sanctuary*