The Hamburger Trail : The Man Who Saved Jack in the Box

In January, 1993, Dave Theno was doing as well as any 42-year-old Ph.D. had a right to expect. His food safety consulting firm, founded only a few years earlier, was booming.

Clients, including some of the West’s major food companies, were so numerous that he flew his own plane to make business calls. He lived in a comfortable, rambling ranch house in Modesto with his second wife, Robin, who was also his business partner. He would have played golf more often but there just wasn’t time with frequent 16-hour workdays.

Theno’s good fortune was not a matter of luck or family wealth.

Colleagues consider him one of the nation’s leading food microbiologists. Moreover, he is a borderline workaholic who has impressed many with his drive and problem-solving ability. Theno’s career accomplishments have won him appointment to a prestigious scientific advisory board that assists the federal government in solving food safety problems. His network of contacts in the food industry, government and academia is vast.

So it was no surprise that on Jan. 17, 1993, Theno’s phone rang relentlessly with word that a severe food poisoning incident was underway. Among the close-knit society of food scientists, news about an outbreak of this scope travels instantaneously.

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The first cases were being reported from Washington state. The common source was hamburgers. The pathogen was extremely opportunistic and affected primarily the weak: children, the infirm, pregnant women and the elderly. Symptoms were severe abdominal pains and bloody diarrhea. The culprit was soon identified as a little known infectious bacteria called E. coli 0157:H7.

In advanced stages, E. coli 0157:H7 develops into Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, which, if not treated successfully, slowly shuts down all the vital organs, one at a time, until death.

Before the outbreak subsided a few months later, there were four deaths and more than 700 illnesses in the largest E. coli contamination in U.S. history.

The hamburgers, health officials learned, had been sold by Jack in the Box restaurants, a division of San Diego-based Foodmaker Inc.

The newly installed Clinton Administration considered the outbreak a national health crisis. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was dispatched on a presidential jet to reassure the public that the federal government would expend all necessary resources to stem the problem.

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“The reason I am so personally affected by this entire issue is because I met with those parents (of the victims) in Washington state (20 months ago),” Espy said in a recent interview with The Times. “The mother of one young child--with tears in her eyes--asked me: ‘Why did my child die when she had eaten a hamburger that was stamped ‘USDA Inspected’? And I think that is a good question.”

It was a food company’s worst nightmare: intense negative media; cruel jokes; plummeting sales; restaurant closures; congressional hearings and a swarm of government investigations.

The contaminated meat, it was later determined, had been insufficiently cooked, allowing the dangerous bacteria to continue growing inside the patties. But a former FDA official testified that the meat was apparently so loaded with E. coli that the harmful organisms would have survived even if the burgers were heated to the recommended internal temperature of 155 degrees.

Foodmaker quickly acknowledged responsibility, offered to repay the victims’ medical expenses and moved to initiate out-of-court settlements in the many lawsuits filed in the case. Few financial analysts would have predicted that any food company could survive in such a climate. A fast-food chain, which lives mostly on image, is especially vulnerable, and Jack in the Box’s image was in shambles.

In fact, the name Jack in the Box became the fast-food equivalent of Exxon after the Valdez oil spill and Johnson & Johnson after the Tylenol tampering.

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The chain’s employees were offered group and private psychological counseling. Some workers even reported that their children were taunted at school about their parents’ link to the hamburger-related illnesses and deaths.

Federal officials, including experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were never able to determine exactly where the E. coli bacteria entered the food chain. Nor did they determine what went wrong.

Most alarming, everyone involved in the investigation acknowledges that a similar deadly outbreak could happen again. A recent study by the Institute for Science in Society stated that “Bacterial contamination of meat and poultry is a time bomb waiting to go off at any time.”

The nonprofit Kensington, Md.-based group of food scientists and academics called particular attention to E. coli 0157:H7, stating that “even small amounts of this toxin can cause severe illnesses or death in vulnerable individuals.” More ominous, according to the institute, is that E. coli 0157:H7 is not destroyed by freezing and can actually grow during refrigeration.

At the time, food consultant Theno did not dream that he would ever get involved in the Jack in the Box mess. He had more business than he and his small staff could handle.

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But then he got the call he couldn’t refuse: a plea from Foodmaker President Bob Nugent and Chief Executive Officer Jack Goodall to try to salvage the company’s reputation. No expense would be spared, and Theno would be free to adopt any science or technology that would solve the E. coli problem in hamburgers. It was an enormous challenge.

Theno closed his consulting firm, moved to a house on the beach in La Jolla and went to work full-time with Foodmaker as vice president for quality assurance and product safety.

Now, 20 months later, Theno stands as the man who saved Jack in the Box.

The company has virtually stopped its financial hemorrhaging. In the third quarter of 1994, Foodmaker reported losses of $3.4 million, versus $30.8 million during the same period in 1993.

In addition to the financial turnaround, Theno may have created the model food safety system for large restaurant chains. He has even promised to share his discoveries with his fast-food competitors in order to help solve a growing industry-wide contamination problem.

The company recently completed implementation of its state-of-the-art food safety system, designed by Theno, in all of its 1,175 Jack in the Box restaurants, 580 of which are in California.

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In fact, Foodmaker’s entire corporate culture is being remade in the aftermath of the trauma of January, 1993.

Employees have been instructed to stop using the word headquarters when speaking of the sprawling corporate facility; now it’s the less intimidating support center. If something goes wrong in one of the restaurants, there should be no hesitancy on the part of any employee to call the support center for help.

Nameplates and titles have been removed from all office walls. In their place is only the name of the department.

“The idea is to make sure that there are no barriers to communication, that everyone is free to contribute and participate,” says Theno, who attributes the plan to a committee but has his fingerprints all over the concept.

The company also has instituted a real open-door policy, which quite literally requires all office doors to remain open--something that required fire marshal approval. Foodmaker, which had a local reputation for stiff formality among its employees, has even implemented a casual dress day on Fridays.

More important, Foodmaker’s Jack in the Box restaurants are the first in the nation to be operating under a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point program, or HACCP.

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In essence, HACCP requires that a priority--such as food safety--be established. Then it identifies all the critical points in the food system that might create problems and damage the product’s integrity. An HACCP plan then monitors these vulnerable areas for breakdowns or deviations from acceptable standards. When breakdowns occur, workers have an opportunity to correct the deficiencies with the option of destroying an improperly processed product. HACCP was developed in the 1960s to ensure that food served in space to astronauts was sterile.

As one of several responses to the January, 1993, outbreak, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is in the midst of formulating a proposal that will require all meat and poultry processors to adopt HACCP. The lengthy regulatory process, however, will likely delay implementation until the year 2000, according to various estimates.

In the meantime, numerous food companies are following Foodmaker’s lead and proceeding on their own to implement the HACCP scientific principles. The Foodmaker program, in fact, excedes the standards outlined in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Model Food Code that was published in January for both restaurants and supermarkets.

“Our employees are more attuned to food safety than any other employees in a similar job,” Theno says.

Sheri Zizzi, Foodmaker corporate spokeswoman, adds: “We are more sensitized to the realities of food safety. It has real meaning at this company; it’s not just a theory here.”