‘Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food’ Review: Farm to Table to Hospital

A viewer might want to refrain from dining before—or after, or certainly during—“Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food,” which doesn’t wallow in unsavory imagery as much as it provides a lot of information that is hard to digest. Especially if, like most humans, you want to eat. And you know in your heart a lot of this stuff already.

“America has the safest food supply in the world” is a refrain heard throughout the documentary, from politicians on both sides of the aisle, and it may be true: The system in other countries may be even worse than ours. But as the show recounts, various American food industries have been linked over the years to a series of panicky recalls and in some cases fatal illnesses: the infamous E. coli outbreak in 1992-93 Seattle, for instance, that killed four children and was traced back to Jack in the Box hamburgers. The reforms that followed have largely eradicated the perils of meat, if not everything else: The most dangerous things on your hamburger now, says food consultant Mansour Samadpour, are merely the lettuce, tomato and onion.

As we are reminded during “Poisoned,” which is based on the book by Jeff Benedict, there have been any number of salmonella-related crises in recent years involving baby spinach, peanut products, eggs and, naturally or not, chicken. No one in the business of cantaloupe, bean sprouts, romaine lettuce from Arizona or bagged produce in general is going to be happy with the film. And how does that wholesome-looking boneless breast get in that shiny plastic pouch at the supermarket? You don’t want to know. Still, when Perdue opens the doors of its pristine poultry plant in Hurlock, Md., what we see is cleanliness, maybe even godliness. (Such transparency does instill confidence.) And Bruce Stewart-Brown, a veterinarian and the company’s senior vice president of food safety, looks crestfallen when some salmonella is found in a testing sample taken by filmmaker Stephanie Soechtig. One wonders if the bacterium can ever be completely eradicated.

Bill Marler thinks it can, but he’s also a lawyer from Washington state who began advocating for food victims during the Jack in the Box incident. Mr. Marler is a central source in the movie and argues that the food industry could clean up its act if it had the will and fewer lobbyists. It’s clear that a self-regulating industry would be preferable: Tim York, CEO of California’s Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement—whose signatories include Dole, Fresh Express and Organicgirl—has to concede that the group’s efforts have been far from 100% successful, but he reads as totally sincere in his mission.

The regulatory option hardly instills confidence. Ms. Soechtig gets two bureaucrats to agree to sit down for a penurious 30 minutes— Sandra Eskin, deputy under secretary for food safety in the Agriculture Department, and Frank Yiannas, who recently resigned as a deputy commissioner with the Food and Drug Administration. They explain their areas of authority and then explain how little authority they have. This may be a congressional problem, but both seem distinctly put upon to have to answer questions at all. Mindy Brashears, who held a similar position to Ms. Eskin in the Trump administration, is a pretty, smiling scientist who stops smiling so much when answering questions about who funded her research at Texas Tech.

For all the troubling appraisals, “Poisoned” is a thoroughly captivating program, one that does not ignore personal responsibility in the arena of food prep but also provides news you can use: Does anyone who currently wields a frying pan not treat chicken like a “biohazard,” as someone puts it? Unlikely. But the pitfalls of cross-contamination aren’t always easy to avoid—“even for someone as careful as me,” says microbiologist Lance Price.

He lays out a very plausible scenario: You buy chicken; you bring it home and open it, putting the plastic wrapping in the garbage (using your foot) and the chicken into hot oil. Then you go to the sink, turn on the faucet (which you’ve now contaminated), pump the soap dispenser (also now contaminated), wash your hands, turn off the faucet (thus re-contaminating your hands) and throw the rest of the packaging away (using your hands). “Then I’m going to go make a salad.”

It would be blackly funny if the victims focused on by Ms. Soechtig weren’t so poignant and the possible casualties so expansive. (The CDC, we are told, says 48 million people in the U.S. are affected by food-borne illnesses each year, though how that number is determined is not explained.) Full disclosure: I’ve had salmonella twice, probably from restaurant salads, and a beloved relative died in 2017 from a listeria infection. So I’m hardly a disinterested observer. But when it comes to food, who is?

—Mr. Anderson is the Journal’s TV critic.