Thirty years ago in January saw the beginning of what became known as "The Crisis" at Jack in the Box restaurants, when hundreds of customers became seriously ill after eating hamburgers containing Escherichia coli O157:H7. This illness outbreak—at the time, the largest in U.S. history—would claim four young lives, leave many others with lifelong health impairments, sicken over 700 people, and nearly ruin Foodmaker Inc., the parent company of Jack in the Box.

Two years prior to this outbreak, in 1991, I spent my first Thanksgiving away from home at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Lompoc, California. At the time, I had no idea that Jack in the Box would become a defining part of my career in food safety or that I would even have a career in "food safety." I would later join the quality assurance team at Jack in the Box, led by the late Dr. David Theno, a prominent food safety and process control consultant who was hired by Foodmaker to figure out why the outbreak occurred and to put systems in place to prevent another one from happening.