It takes something I’m really frustrated with to get me out of an (ahem) three-month blogging lag, and this morning, the Washington Post provided it. (Which, ah, I knew because Huffington Post twittered it…have I mentioned that half the reason I haven’t been blogging is because I’ve been deceiving myself into thinking twitter posts phoned in from a bus commute suffice?). But regardless of who reported it, the story is this:
Peanut Corporation of America knew its peanut butter tested positive for salmonella when it sold it.
Ok, that’s bad. That’s really bad. That’s about the point where my jaw dropped while reading the article. But the frustration didn’t come until I got to page 2, when I came across this:
“The FDA has never inspected the plant, instead delegating that duty under a contract to the Georgia Department of Agriculture. The federal agency has said it does not have enough inspectors to visit the country’s 65,520 domestic food production facilities. In fiscal 2008, it inspected 5,930 plants.”
And the Georgia Department of Ag? Well they visited the plant. A few times actually:
“But they did not test either the factory or the peanut products for salmonella.” Seems like they were in the same boat: “‘We do pull product samples from time to time, but we can only run 4,500 samples in a year, and we have 16,000 food-processing and food-sales stores in the state,’ said Oscar Garrison, Georgia’s assistant agriculture commissioner for consumer protection.”
Think about this. You walk into a grocery store, you’re hungry. You head to aisle x, pick up product y, and all you think about as your standing in the checkout line is how excited you are to dig in. Aside from maybe glancing at an expiration date, you don’t think about whether or not it’s going to get you sick.
Of course not. It’s come from a reputable company. It’s got a nutrition label on its box. It probably has a few health claims plastered across the front too. Oh, and a gorgeous, delicious looking picture of what promises to be inside.
For the past few decades, we have made our food choices based on other people’s A-OK. We buy one carton of milk over another because a label says one has less fat. We buy one apple over another because one has a sticker that says “organic.” We buy oranges that say they are from Florida over ones that say they are from Mexico, because maybe we want to be a little closer to home, or know the good reputation of Florida oranges. And we buy things that are even in stores to begin with because someone out there has decided they are fit for our consumption.
But what if that “someone out there” isn’t doing their job? What if the milk is mis-labled, or the oranges are actually from Argentina? What if the apple is chock full of pesticides? Or what if the FDA isn’t able to check in on every single food it assures us is safe?
Well, if it happens once, we get duped. We haul out the $1.50 extra for the apple and never know the difference. Or, we shell out $0.60 for a peanut butter cracker and end up on the toilet for five days. (I’ll let you pick which situation you want to imagine).
But when it happens over and over–spinach, tomatoes, peanut butter–then the system is broken. And when that is the case, we need to reshape the ways we choose the foods that we want to eat.
If you think about it, it comes down to just one thing: trust. We should be able to trust the FDA. We should be able to trust any company that we buy something from. We should also be able to trust the stores that stock the products that we buy. But when incidents like this happen, we have to realize that that big, shiny, attractive bubble of trust–even if it should be standing tall–just shattered all over the ground.
It is time to put our food production in the hands of the people we trust. That may be turning to local farmers who we can meet face to face, ask questions, get to know. It may be relying on larger companies, but ones committed to transparency, and honesty, and the safety of their consumers over their bottom line. And it may be turning to our backyards or communal plots and putting our own hands in the soil. But no matter if it is one of those, or some combination of the three, we need to know for sure that our food source is safe–without have to wonder if some third party would claim the same thing.
Tags: FDA, food security, salmonella