On June 4, 2012, Brian Supalla, health program manager at Yavapai County Community Health Services went before the supervisor-types to discuss plans to introduce the 2009 FDA Food Code to the area.

Supalla wasn’t far into his PowerPoint presentation when he mentioned one of the provisions of the new code – that restaurants would not be allowed to offer hamburgers cooked less than well-done on their children’s menus.

He said that’s because kids don’t have well-developed immune systems and are more susceptible to food-borne illnesses.

But Supervisor Chip Davis stopped him. "Do we have a lot of kids getting sick in Yavapai County from eating rare hamburgers?" Davis asked.

Couldn’t find one of those but did find a kid sickened by E. coli O157:H7 in the 2006 spinach outbreak.

As reported by the Verde Independent, Community Health Services Director Robert Resendes asked the family of Jacob Goswick, a Prescott Valley eighth-grader who was in the second grade when he ate spinach contaminated with E. coli bacteria, if Jacob would testify at the meeting.

Jacob spent two months in Phoenix Children’s Hospital – one month on dialysis – after his kidneys shut down, which is one of the potential side effects of food poisoning.

Since the spinach E. coli outbreak in 2006, both Jacob and his mother, Juliana Goswick, have lobbied in Washington, D.C., to improve food safety.

In his email to the Goswicks, Resendes said, "To have a family of your caliber and unfortunate compelling experience (speak to the board) would be ideal for the cause."

He said that experience would show the supervisors "that indeed foodborne illnesses can and do affect area residents and that some of the newer pathogens, e.g., E. coli, are particularly dangerous to children."

Juliana said she and Jacob would be willing to appear at the meeting, on Monday.