My five-year-old daughter Ashley loves to swim, go to ballet class and tag along after her big sister Isabella. To the world, Ashley is a picture of health and vitality. While she appears to be thriving, my husband and I struggle to deal with her multiple daily medications, a severely restricted diet and the near-certainty that she will undergo several kidney transplants – all because of contaminated spinach containing E. coli 0157:H7 she ate as a toddler.

Ashley was only two years old when, fighting a serious E. coli 0157:H7 infection, she spent six weeks in a hospital, and four months on dialysis. Today, her kidney function is estimated to be less than 25 percent.

I know how close we came to losing Ashley, and I don’t want any other families to face what we and so many others have as the result of contaminants in our food.  That’s why I’m urging you to contact your senators and ask them to support strong food safety legislation.

A bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives passed HR 2749, a very good food safety bill, in July; now it’s time for the Senate to act.

In a few weeks, we will all be joining our families and friends around the Thanksgiving table and next month, it will be for a festive Christmas dinner. Tell your Senators to give FDA the tools it needs to better protect all of us from foodborne illness. Tell them to support food safety legislation and “Make Our Food Safe for the Holidays.”