Food Safety

On: Stuart, D. (2008). “The illusion of control: industrialized agriculture, nature, and food safety,” Agriculture and Human Values 25:177-181.
Moss, M. (2008) E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=food%20safety%20e.%20coli&st=cse
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Micheal Pollan. Chapter 12

All three of these readings concerned food safety, each presenting evidence from a different aspect the rising issue. In "The illusion of control", the message is that concentrated processing facilities greatly increases the risk of disease outbreak.Industrialized producers (leafy greens in this article specifically) have closed off their systems to nature in an attempt to shelter their crops but have consequently interfered with the natural life cycles surrounding them, introducing poisons into food chains (ex: rodent poison to hawks), and negatively effecting the water supply by ridding of vegetation that would naturally filter pollutants in any run-off, essentially they are "fighting with nature" for the "illusion of control" over the safety of their products.

In "E.Coli", it is made clear that meat (especially ground beef) from food giants such as Cargill is far from clean. In one batch of ground beef, the "meat" (aka. fat trimmings and other low quality cuts) comes together from numerous slaughterhouses across the country and even internationally. Whats worse is the lack of insurance of a clean product. The USDA allows grinders to create their own safety plans to avoid outbreaks (such as E. Coli), but many slaughterhouses refuse to sell to grinders who test for contamination, for fear of recall and a bad name( supposedly the slaughterhouses run tests on their own products before sale to grinders- but clearly there is a gap somewhere when E. Coli makes its way into people's meals). Dr. Kenneth Peterson, assistant administrator with the USDA's Dept. of Food Safety and Inspection Service said regarding the potential for the USDA to impart more strict regulation on testing: "'I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health'" But why is public health and food safety not of the utmost importance in comparison to corporate profit?

Pollan once again delivers the alternative to all of the corporate madness: local processing. By processing food closer to where it originates, and in smaller quantities, the risk for disease outbreak is significantly lowered, yet again discrediting the industrial mode of production. Pollan writes about Salatin's "open air abbatoir" and mentions his theory that "regulation is the single biggest impediment to building a viable local food chain" (236). Saltin makes a solid point when he says "We do not allow the government to dictate what religion you can observe so why should we allow them to dictate what kind of food you can buy?" (236). To some extent, the safety of our food must be kept at a certain standard, but when is it safe for people to make their own decisions about buying from alternative/local producers instead of commercial?