Food Safety?

Food safety has certainly been in the news lately.  From e. coli to Salmonella, it is difficult to know what is safe to eat, where our food is coming from and how it is grown.  Vegetables are not in the clear as they are sprayed with animal fecal material as fertilizer.  Meat products have been raising red flags as we have seen ‘downer cattle’ in our school lunches.  Recently, we have been warned not to eat fresh tomatoes and jalapenos while Kroger Company recalls a half a million pounds of meat from Northwest stores such as Fred Meyer and QFC. 

But worse yet is the conversation that accompanies these warnings and recalls.  Instead of directing consumers to learn about who is producing their food, where their food is coming from and how it is grown, newspapers and radio stories are focusing on other ways to “stay safe.”  The Oregonian printed a neat little fact box in its recent story about the beef recall.  It instructs us to:

(1)    Discard any recalled ground beef (really?),
(2)    To thoroughly cook all of our ground beef (you don’t say),
(3)    Not to eat any ground beef that is pink in the middle (so much for those medium rare cheese
        burgers!)
(4)    Not spread bacteria through our kitchen by using hot, soapy water for cleaning (genius!)

Yes, most of these tips are good things to do, but I feel rather insulted that this is the level of conversation the Oregonian is subjecting us to.  Not only are we treated like helpless imbeciles who don’t know the first thing about meat handling, but nowhere in this astute list of tips are actual words of wisdom that might actually keep us healthy and confident in our food system.

While listening to the “Talk of the Nation” on National Public Radio the other day, I was excited to hear that a representative from the Food and Drug Administration would be on to talk about the recent Salmonella outbreak.  Surely, I would hear some enlightening conversation around this issue… unfortunately not.  It took a caller to acknowledge the fact that vegetables themselves will not contain one of these bacteria unless they come into contact with some sort of animal material, and once again, the final words of advice that the nation was left with were “avoid fresh jalapenos.”

It took the Union of Concerned Scientists newsletter for me to actually find something I could sink my teeth into when it came to reporting on this issue. They say that “the widespread nature of the illnesses points to an inherent weakness of our industrial food production system: When production is centralized and fresh food travels thousands of miles, contamination can spread farther and faster” (now we’re onto something…)  And, finally, the advice I was looking for:  “The FDA has said that local and homegrown tomatoes are unaffected by the current Salmonella outbreak.  Shopping at farmers’ markets for produce grown close to home is one way consumers can reduce their risk of food-borne illness.” 

Thank you UCS for some journalistic integrity.

Comments

[Rebecca T. of HonestMeat]

The FDA will never look at the root of these problems, which is animal manure getting in our water, which then gets in contact with the vegetables either through irrigation, run-off, or processing water. There are no calls by the FDA to clean up CAFOs or to limit the use of CAFO manure on agricultural fields (which is not only laden with pathogens but also antibiotics, hormones, and heavy metals).
Cooking a burger till it is gray and flavorless in the middle is no solution- buying your meat and produce direct from the farmer is.