For Nancy Donley, the fight for safer food started one agonizing summer night in 1993.
She and her family had hamburgers for dinner, and soon after, her 6-year-old son Alex complained of a stomachache. Within hours, he had curled himself into a ball and was begging his mother for comfort.
The next morning, thinking Alex might have appendicitis, Donley took him to the pediatrician. The doctor sent Alex to the emergency room at a children’s hospital near their home in Chicago.
A toxin was invading the boy’s body. Blood began to flow from Alex’s bowels, and when he became too weak to stand, Donley helped change a stream of soaked diapers. Soon Alex lost neurological control and battled tremors and hallucinations. His kidneys shut down, then his lungs. After Alex suffered a massive seizure, his mother watched as the brain waves on his monitor flatlined. “He was gone,” Donley…
