2 + 2 = 4
(Factory Food • )
Carl Lowe, blogging in the Birmingham Family Health Examiner, reports on the sad truth about the quality of our water, the culpability of U.S. meat factories and the salmonella showing up in grocery store offerings:
Researchers at the University of Georgia have found that Salmonella may be in about 80 percent of rivers and streams. As the water temperature gets warmer, the increased temperatures are helping this pathogen thrive.“Streams are not routinely tested for Salmonella, and our finding is an indication that many more could be contaminated than people realize,” warns researcher Erin Lipp, PhD, associate professor at Georgia’s College of Public Health. “We found our highest numbers in the summer months, and this is also the time when most people get sick.”
Dr. Lipp’s research shows that more and different kinds of Salmonella are found near farms with cattle, suggesting that livestock and farms are increasing the problem.
Dr. Lipp believes that many times when Salmonella is found on foods like lettuce or spinach, it originated in irrigation water. “We …have the potential to decrease the likelihood of larger outbreaks related to produce, because in many cases contaminated irrigation water, and not the produce itself, may be the cause of the outbreak.”
Salmonella rolls downhill off cow poop when it rains. Rainwater drains into creeks and rivers. If the USDA or something like them would add up the facts and then slap some meaningful licensing restrictions on beef factories, a.k.a. feedlots, then maybe the U.S. food supply wouldn’t make U.S. food eaters vomit so often.
None of which, by the way, explains why four types of salmonella has been found in Setton International Foods’ pistachios.
Meanwhile, the latest in a long string of relatively recent national salmonella scares has demonstrated to food producers that the inadequacies of the current food inspection system cut both ways: Not only does the system usually not identify contaminated food until it’s gotten out in the public and made a lot of people sick, the current system also often paints entire industries with the broad brush of dangerous negligence (sometimes entirely by mistake, as when the FDA identified tomatoes as the source of a salmonella outbreak, when it turned out in the end to be certain chile peppers).
“We were floored,” said Larry Easterling, who farms 1,800 acres of pistachios near Kettleman City. “Why is the whole industry being blackballed? You can’t stop an industry dead in its tracks.”California produces 96% of the nation’s pistachio supply, with most coming from Kern, Madera, Tulare, Fresno and Kings counties.
At least two Valley pistachio processors have posted messages on their Web sites alerting customers that they are not part of the pistachio recall: Paramount Farms in Lost Hills — the nation’s largest grower with 30,000 acres — and Keenan Farms in Avenal.
“The longer it takes to identify the branded products involved in this, the more confused consumers will become about pistachios,” Matoian said. “And at some point, people will stop eating them. It could be devastating.”
Chances are it will be, if you’re a pistachio processor. Unless maybe you can develop a way to certify your product as being contaminant-free and give end consumers a way to trace it right back to where it was grown. No sarcasm, I sincerely wish you good luck with that, because it’s clearly time to build a new system producers and consumers both can trust.
And I’m sorry, but until then it’s probable that the only nuts I’ll be eating any time soon that begin with the letter “P” are the pecans I’ve picked and processed from my own trees.
→ B.Dunn, Apr 06, 2009, 07 38 am
