Building a Better World, Together

There is simply too much dangerous salmonella in the poultry we eat. Almost 1.35 million people get sick from the bacteria every year, and about a fifth of those cases come from eating chicken or turkey. The reasons are fairly well-known. One is the crowded and dirty conditions in which chickens are often raised. Another is that the Department of Agriculture actually allows poultry producers to sell meat that may be contaminated with the bacteria.

That’s right: While poultry producers must routinely test for salmonella, up to 9.8 percent of whole chickens, 15.4 percent of chicken parts, and 25 percent of the ground chicken they test may contain the bacteria. Even at higher amounts, the USDA doesn’t stop the plant from selling meat; it just issues a warning.

To investigate the danger of this regulatory gap, CR recently tested ground meat (which is especially likely to be contaminated with bacteria) that we purchased at stores around the U.S. We found an extremely dangerous strain of E. coli in one sample of ground beef—triggering a large recall—as well as salmonella in 23 of the 75 ground chicken samples. Most of the salmonella detected was one of three strains that pose particular threats to human health, and all were resistant to at least one antibiotic.

After we published that report, the USDA announced a plan to no longer allow salmonella in frozen, raw breaded chicken products, a step forward. But CR thinks the USDA can do more, by reducing the amount of salmonella allowed in all chicken and by focusing on dangerous strains. Join us by signing our petition ask the USDA to Reform Outdated Chicken-Safety Rules. For cooking safety tips, read our report “Is Our Ground Meat Safe to Eat?”

Consumers currently have little visibility into companies’ greenhouse gas emissions and other climate impacts. So CR supports a rule proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission that would require many companies to make climate-related disclosures. While that’s a positive development, CR believes the rule should be made even stronger, by requiring all companies to disclose so-called scope 3 emissions, which include those from transportation and shipping and can make up the majority of the greenhouse gas emissions for some businesses.

What’s at stake: With consumer goods, if a price seems unfair you can just choose not to buy the product. Not so with auto insurance, which drivers are required to have in almost every state.

That makes it especially troubling that car insurance prices are often calculated unfairly. Specifically, CR has found that they are often tied to nondriving factors such as education level, home ownership, and credit score. In New York, for example, CR found that someone with a clean driving record but poor credit paid, on average, $1,759 per year more than drivers with excellent credit.

Among other problems, nondriving factors can sometimes be proxies for race or ethnicity, and using them can compound the economic effects of structural racism and discrimination.

How CR has your back: CR has long fought to ensure that auto insurance pricing be based only on driving factors. Three CR investigations—in 2015, 2017, and 2021—exposed companies that deviated from that principle. And in 2017 we helped persuade New York to ban the use of education and job status in car insurance pricing, unless insurers could prove they’re not unfairly discriminatory.

Now CR is supporting legislation in New Jersey and New York that would ban such practices more broadly and require more transparency into pricing formulas to make sure they don’t contain built-in biases.

What you can do: If you believe you’re being overcharged for auto insurance based on nondriving factors, tell us what your car insurance costs are.