They do WHAT to our Food?

This op-ed piece in the morning paper got me heading out to my local farmer's market with an extra mesh bag.   It's entitled "Something's Rotten in Food Oversight."

Today American food is more manufactured than grown. Following a scorched-earth approach, workers wearing "spacesuits" inject nerve agents into the soil before planting, leaving nothing alive. Hogs grow enclosed in facilities several stories high. Tomatoes are picked green, gassed and then canned.

Read the whole thing but I'm warning you - the big-picture look at the issue is even grimmer.  The authors' sarcastic sign-off is "But don't despair.  September is National Food Safety Education Month."  Mine own sign-off would be something like: "Despair big-time if something major doesn't change in November.  Like control of our worse-than-useless Congress."

Comments

[Michael]

Having grown vegetables commercially including spinach for many years, I can state with some experience that there are a mulitude of ways that bacteria can enter fresh leafy greens both in the field and in the processing plant. But the real point many are missing, is the fact that food has to be transported long distances in the U.S to meet market demands. That process, a vital link in the cool chain, is fraught with difficulties. A few hours above temp anywhere along the line, and the product is at risk. Eat locally - it is cheaper and safer.

[Carol]

I went on a class field trip in college to a potato farm. I left with a lasting impression and resolve to always scrub potatoes before I cook them.

They first kill all the vegetative growth with an herbicide, then harvest the potatoes, wash them in some filthy water, rinse them in some water that didn't look that much cleaner, send them through a drying process, then drop them into 5 or 10 pound bags.

And people wonder why I will never eat a potato skin that I have not personally scrubbed or watched someone else scrub.

Bon appetit!

[Bonnie Jones]

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