I’m sure no one could have seen this coming:
…a large-scale California beef-packing plant owned by Cargill churned out, packaged up, and distributed widely some 830,000 pounds of ground beef tainted with antibiotic-resistant salmonella.
All the vegans and vegetarians as well as the organic foodies, locavores/localvores, and slow food nationals can take this opportunity to say their/our I-told-you-sos. Once we do so, than what? What will it take for people to get it? Factory food isn’t safe. There’s too much profit, politics, and branding at stake for it ever to be about food.
No amount of post-processing regulation can undo miserable pre-processing and processing conditions. Something will always fall through the cracks. Antibiotic-resistant! Now what are you gonna do? Any chance of that resistance passing through to the consumer?
This is why I have no patience for the people who are trying to protect me from unpasteurized milk. If you’re milk isn’t healthy from the beginning to the end of the processes and at every step in between, you can’t zap health into it at the end. Someday, there might be a bacteria that will not die from heat. I am not under any illusions that such a condition will compel anyone to re-examine their pre-processing and processing protocols.
It doesn’t seem like much, but I will continue to feed myself from the farmers I know as much as possible and be extremely careful when selecting food items that don’t come from farmers I know.
on Aug 19th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Getting food from the farmers in our area, who we know and know their practices, is an eye-opener as a contrast to the factory/industrial method. I’m lactose intolerant, so the milk doesn’t apply, but I went with friends to Trinity Dairy last week on the way to Easy Pickin’s Orchard, and they were completely left in (happy) shock – and immediately made the switch on both taste and the closeness to the source of the food. I don’t want to bash people who don’t have that option near them, but if its there, it is something worth looking into.
on Aug 23rd, 2009 at 9:57 pm
MC: I so agree. I am not bashing people who don’t eat close to the source (with or without a nearby option). I’m bashing the people who create unsafe food and I’m double-bashing the people who tell you that the unsafe food is perfectly safe, and I’m triple-bashing the people who want to make it illegal for me to decide on my own what’s safe and what’s not. Other than that, I think we can all get along.