First it was cilantro and parsley.
Then it included alfalfa sprouts.
Then the list expanded to 18 other vegetables capable of making you sick.
And today it's ground beef again.
And yes, sadly, that is just for this week, and yes it is pretty normal. America has achieved almost a food recall per day, usually each originating with a set of individuals made sick or killed by one bacteria or another in the clean, packaged, healthy looking food. Most often these individuals are our children and our grandparents.
Even more amazing to me is the response we get when mentioning this to people. In general the view of most Americans we talk to is "wow, isn't it great we are now catching so many of these occurrences and doing recalls." That type of response shows me one thing... we have fallen so far in this country that we as a society have accepted that we cannot raise healthy safe food and must rely on catching the necessary bad food before too many people suffer. This is an assumption either that we have given up on food production, or that we don't even know food can be safe. This argument is much like saying our "nation is more moral because the prisons are full." It does not address the cause of the problem nor recognize that it is getting progressively worse, instead it praises the ability to catch the growing number of failures of the system.
This isn't a debate about the health content of food, whether organic is better for us than chemical... no... this is a debate whether food is poisonous or not. How far has our country fallen when the topic leaves "which approach makes people healthier" and becomes "how many people can we prevent from dieing this week".
sigh
Why is it so bad? Virtually all food production experts agree its simple.
- We as a nation value convenience over health
- We as a nation value profit over health
- We as a nation strive to save a dollar on our food so we can spend it on pleasure
- In order to achieve 1 - 3, we have applied industrialization factory based consolidation to food production.
What the point of all this? This is not a pointless ranting about the evils of society. Instead I present to you a call to action. The problem is actually amazingly easy to implement. To fix the system all we must do is, one at a time, change our buying habits. That's it. I propose that if you, as a reader of this blog, commit today to make 2011 the year you become part of the solution instead of part of the problem, the tide will change within 1 generation. How can I be so sure?
Remember the 70's and 80-"s? How many organic options did you see in the supermarket? I recall my own Dad as one of the only organic gardeners around. I recall people laughing at his attempts to use manure, compost, natural pest control, etc instead of chemical poisons and fertilizers. Organic in those days was the buzzword for crackpot, extremist, backwards, uneducated. Today walk the isles in the grocery store. The word "organic" appears everywhere. Why? because people started buying it.
What you buy today determines what you can buy tomorrow.
It is that simple. If you commit for 2011 to visit farmers markets for produce, buy meat from a local farmer processed in the local butcher shop, and buy only organically produced canned foods, the system will change for your children. It has to start with you, not your neighbor, not the government, just you. How much easier can it be?
2011 is just around the corner... Will you be part of the problem, or part of the solution? Today is the day to choose.
Put into perspective, our food chain is extremely safe. How many cases of botulism have you heard of from eating commercially canned foods? Remember the biblical warning against eating pork?
ReplyDeleteNow I agree that I much prefer the eggs from the hens in my backyard, but it's also not going to stop me from eating store-bought foods, although I do prefer foods without the added drugs.
From the perspective of sterilized canned foods, then sure... if the last step of processing is sterilization then you can be fairly sure it is safe. Unfortunately this approach is known to remove most of hte nutrients that we eat food for, so its somewhat pointless. Canning is never a first option for nutritious food, fresh is. the more you process a food, the less nutrition it contains. so if canning is hte way to keep our food safe, we would as a nation suffer from even higher rates of degenerative diseases. Worse, if canning was the remedy, then the practices used today would continue, whihc would further destroy the soil and make hte damage more permament.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, to put the problem in prespective.. here is a quote from the CDC website:
To better quantify the impact of foodborne diseases on health in the United States, we compiled and analyzed information from multiple surveillance systems and other sources. We estimate that foodborne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. Known pathogens account for an estimated 14 million illnesses, 60,000 hospitalizations, and 1,800 deaths. Three pathogens, Salmonella, Listeria, and Toxoplasma, are responsible for 1,500 deaths each year, more than 75% of those caused by known pathogens, while unknown agents account for the remaining 62 million illnesses, 265,000 hospitalizations, and 3,200 deaths. Overall, foodborne diseases appear to cause more illnesses but fewer deaths than previously estimated.
Based on the government numbers, seems like a pretty significant problem to me.
The comment about the biblical mandate agaisnt eating pork is intersting. Without getting into a religious discussion in a farm blog, let me just say two things:
ReplyDelete1. if an individual is decidedly following the mandates of the old testament, i would hesitate to sell him pork. Everyone should be free to live as they choose (within society limits of course).
2. I would hope that such an individual would follow ALL the mandates, including not eating shellfish. There are a large number of mandates in that very section and it would seem less than sincere to follow some and not all.
Nevertheless, I have no personal issue with eating pork, religously speaking. I therefore have no problem supplying pork to those that wish to buy it. I would not encourage anyone to eat pork if their personal religious beliefs restrict it.