Whatever happened to Salmonella enteritidis?

The moment: On a freezing cold December Saturday, an ITN news team caught up with Edwina Currie. Against a backdrop of a council estate in Chellaston, near Derby, she declared: "Most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now infected with salmonella."

The background: Ms Currie was the junior health minister, hated by many for her ambition (and her refusal to keep it hidden) and blunt way with words - such as that Northerners died of "crisps and ignorance", and that cervical cancer was the result of being "far too sexually active - nuns don't get it." Somehow, though, she always survived. In the summer, a report landed on her desk about a problem with hens. In November, a hospital decided not to provide raw eggs to patients. Richard Lacey was a microbiologist working at Leeds University who had grown interested in food quality. Few beyond his university had heard of him, though. Salmonella enteriditis was just what it had been for millions of years - a bacterium which lived on uncooked food and thrived in the human gut, given half a chance, with symptoms ranging from diarrhoea to death.

The effect: Though Ms Currie was able to withstand the farm lobby for a week, she couldn't withstand the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food as well. Two weeks after her statement, she resigned, leaving the government with the problem of what to do with pounds 10m of unsold eggs which were effectively left all over its collectively responsible face. For Ms Currie was right: eggs were a prime suspect in a widespread outbreak of salmonella, although the Egg Industry Council said it was implicated in only 26 of 36,000 reported cases of food poisoning.

Professor Lacey achieved widespread media visibility as a commentator on salmonella (which declined to be interviewed) and its drastic effects, which can include death. Salmonella became a byword for the dangers in our food.

Moments of subsequence: Ms Currie has never returned to the government benches, but instead has turned her hand to annoying party colleagues in other ways, such as being pro-European and writing sex 'n' Select Committee novels about fictional goings-on in the Commons - detailing activities that The Sun would call "steamy" but MPs would think too normal.

Professor Lacey warned against the dangers of "cook-chill" supermarket foods, and how they could not kill bacteria; and that microwaving could cause the production of dangerous chemicals on the surface of foods. Most recently, he has warned of a coming epidemic of CJD among Britons which he says will have been caused by eating BSE-infected food products. Salmonella enteriditis, even without a safe political seat, a book agent or university tenure, has proved to be a similarly doughty survivor. It still kills about 50 people a year; in September, a 49-year-old mother died after three weeks of painful illness, caused by licking a cake mix she had made which contained raw egg. Her husband and two sons ate the cake and lived.

Charles Arthur