Last week, ProPublica published an investigation documenting the failures in the U.S. food safety system that allowed the spread of a type of salmonella known as multidrug-resistant infantis. The bacteria has sickened tens of thousands of people, but outdated government policies and pushback from trade groups have left federal agencies with little power to stop infantis from spreading through the poultry industry.
Our reporting relied on public records requests and dozens of interviews, the bread and butter of journalism. But I also made use of a type of data ProPublica has never before tapped into: publicly available genomic sequencing data.
