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SICKENED BY THE SYSTEM: CENTRALIZATION HEIGHTENS THE THREAT OF FOOD ILLNESS
Jan 04, 2007 Ventura County Star (CA) John Krist http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/opinion_colum nists/article/0,1375,VCS_223_5254742,00.html
Two outbreaks of dangerous food-borne illness over the past four months demonstrated that public perception is, according to this column, at least as formidable an adversary for growers as frost, drought and insects. The incidents also raised tough questions about the safety of the American food supply, a recurrent concern that will likely lead in coming months to proposals for legislation and regulation that are unlikely to accomplish much.
The story goes on to say that in general, the American food supply is probably safer than it was 100 years ago, when preservation and hygiene techniques were less sophisticated.
What's changed, however, is that the very notion of an "American food supply" would have made no sense a century ago, whereas today it both describes the food system and explains why outbreaks of illness have become more difficult to control.
People did get sick from the food they ate a century ago, but outbreaks remained localized. Family members might get sick from a meal made in their kitchen with ingredients produced on their farm or on a neighboring farm.
Large outbreaks were typically of the church-supper variety: Someone would bring a contaminated dish to a group potluck, and by next morning the 50 or 60 people who shared it would be suffering intestinal discomfort. In short, there was no truly national food supply. There were local or regional food supplies.
Now, however, food moves from producer to consumer through a vastly different chain, one that has increased the economic efficiency of the market but has had a host of negative effects as well — including making it possible for a single incident of contamination to blossom overnight into a nationwide health problem.
The American food system is increasingly dominated by a small number of large distributors, which aggregate products from a huge area, process them in central locations, and then ship them to multiple markets. In such a system, a single contaminated batch of meat or produce — whether that contamination occurs in the field, slaughterhouse or packaging plant — can be mixed with products from multiple farms and dispersed on a global scale.
The product involved in the spinach incident illustrates this centralization of production and globalization of distribution: The spinach was processed by Natural Selection Foods of San Juan Bautista, but was sold under 29 labels in 26 states as well as Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Iceland.
Plants grow outdoors in dirt. Bacteria are ubiquitous in water, soil, and the guts of wild and domesticated animals; with our help, these pathogens are constantly evolving new ways to torment us and resist our medical weapons. No system of inspection and testing can keep them entirely out of our food, and as long as the system remains so highly centralized, the potential for widespread outbreaks will persist.
Ultimately, the consumer's best protective strategy might be from an earlier century: Know the people who grow and prepare your food (how does this make food microbiologically safe? -- dp)
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