What will it take to protect nation’s food supply?
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Aug. 25, 2010, San Francisco Chronicle.
What will it take to protect the nation’s food supply? Apparently the recall of a half billion eggs and 1,500-and-counting cases of salmonella. Add in the scofflaw conduct of a major egg producer and a slow moving federal bureaucracy. The sum total may finally spur action.
There is plenty of blame to spread around in the latest food-borne disease outbreak, traceable to at least two major egg factories in Iowa linked to a rogue operator. So big and vast were the egg operations that the illness has spread across 22 states in a few weeks.
It shouldn’t have happened because the potential problem was staring at inspectors for years. The egg producer had a rap sheet for environmental, labor and immigration offenses that should have put him on a neon-lighted watch list.
Don’t count the excaped chickens, count the number of times you had food poisoning. The odds it is zero. Our food supply is incredibly safe even with the rare occurance.
Our food is very cheap, good, and relativly wholesome.
Airliners crash even with the FAA, crime ia rampent even with 700,000 cops, and you are going to get sick with over a million physician and GNC.
Be grateful, not hateful we lead such a blessed life.
Acknowledging that we in the west and particularly in America lead a blessed life, does not obviate the fact that other people, animals and the environment pay the downstream costs of our “cheap” food and profligate lifestyles. There is nothing wholesome about cramming thousands of hens into cages so small that they can hardly move and must have their beaks cut off so they don’t peck each because they are so stressed. There is nothing wholesome about the rampent use of antibiotics (and the associated resistance to them by pathogens) to stave off infections due to these overcrowded, feces laden conditions.
Food is “cheap” because of the inhumane treatment of animals, chemical intensive agri-business and federal subsidies. The total bill for our “cheap” food includes safety recalls, depleated soils, fertilizer and manure run-off polluting water sources, massive landfills, etc. This bill has yet to be paid in full and interest is compounding daily.
One answer is a trend that is ‘growing ‘rapidly and that is the local food movement. Growing the food close to where it is consumed in smaller farms and gardens provides a fresher, healthier alternative that also lessens the need for fuel consuming trips to far away markets. Composting food waste closes the loop by providing healthy soil in which to grow food while diverting methane producing food waste from landfills and further reducing fuel consuming landfill runs.