Lettuce Recalled Over E. Coli Concerns

Bill Miller · October 13, 2006

If all food was produced organically there would be widespread starvation, war and pestilence.

Hawthorne · October 13, 2006

If all food was produced organically there would be widespread starvation, war and pestilence.
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You'll hear no argument from me on this point. Though I'd be happy if food production were just in the hands of individuals, rather than huge corporations. However, I'm not sure that organic production in and of itself would eliminate these ecoli contaminations of produce. Cow manure, after all, is organic.

However, we may be in a minority on this thing. There seem to be a lot of people who are happy for the government and agribiz to collaborate on what we get to eat, and what constitutes food safety.

It's not been that long since the feds decided to write a standard for organic production. Or at least, to let agribiz write such a standard. Fortunately, the word got out, and some of the worst provisions of it did get fixed. As originally written, almost any produce could have been labeled 'organic'.

They are now messing with the standards for 'grass fed' and 'pasture fed'. Anyone care to redefine some terms?

They want to 'protect' our meat supply with rfid tags, too - more info at http://www.nonais.org.

Cheers -

jayt90 · October 13, 2006

This morning I read a news report that food inspectors have found e coli 157 bacteria i cattle manure at a large cattle operation about a mile away from the source of suspect spinach. There is no causal link, yet, but the association is strong.
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we had that story too, but i don't remember seeing those specific words. our story said cattle grazing in fields nearby, which conjures up a different impression.
sometimes, bad stuff just happens. i'm afraid that every once in a while something like that is going to happen.
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Russ, you didn't get much of the story.

From The Toronto Star, Oct. 13, 2006:

The strain of E.coli behind a recent outbreak has been linked to a cattle ranch next to the spinach fields in California's Salinas Valley, state and federal investigarors said yesterday.

The strain of pathogenic E. coli 0157:H7 was found in three cattle manure samples collected at one of four ranches under investigation, the officials said. The ranch is within 1.5 kilometres of he produce fields.

"We do not have a definitive cause-and-effect here. We do have a very important finding," said Dr. Kevin Reilly, deputy director of the Prevention Services Division of the California Department of Health Services. Investigators still did not know how the feces could have contaminated the spinach implicated in the bacterial outbreak.

russ parsons · October 13, 2006

This morning I read a news report that food inspectors have found e coli 157 bacteria i cattle manure at a large cattle operation about a mile away from the source of suspect spinach. There is no causal link, yet, but the association is strong.
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we had that story too, but i don't remember seeing those specific words. our story said cattle grazing in fields nearby, which conjures up a different impression.
sometimes, bad stuff just happens. i'm afraid that every once in a while something like that is going to happen.
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Russ, you didn't get much of the story.
From The Toronto Star, Oct. 13, 2006:
The strain of E.coli behind a recent outbreak has been linked to a cattle ranch next to the spinach fields in California's Salinas Valley, state and federal investigarors said yesterday. The strain of pathogenic E. coli 0157:H7 was found in three cattle manure samples collected at one of four ranches under investigation, the officials said. The ranch is within 1.5 kilometres of the produce fields.
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nope. didn't miss a thing. let's see, we've got three infected cow turds within 1 mile of the spinach fields. i still don't see how that equates to a "large operation." my argument was not with the bare facts, but with the loaded language.

russ parsons · October 13, 2006

I'd be happy if food production were just in the hands of individuals, rather than huge corporations.
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actually, more than 80% of the farms in california are owned by individuals or by families. this is not to argue that there isn't a problem, just that the problem is a lot more complex than the usually cited "agribusiness" (how long would a farm that was not a business stay open?) or "corporate farming."

petite tête de chou · October 14, 2006

Lets bring back the victory gardens.

russ parsons · October 15, 2006

The LA Times ran this piece this morning, which I think is about as lucid a presentation of the facts and arguments as I have seen.

lettuce story

jayt90 · October 15, 2006

The LA Times ran this piece this morning, which I think is about as lucid a presentation of the facts and arguments as I have seen.
lettuce story
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Sorry for the loaded language, but it looks like my Oct. 13 report has been verified.

It is too early to know what is going on; the Times reports a large cattle operation (my words, but the number of acres is substantial) surrounding spinach fields, yet the spinach farmers do not know about this.

Sure, "things happen", but this scary, and not over yet.

Hawthorne · October 15, 2006

I'd be happy if food production were just in the hands of individuals, rather than huge corporations.
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actually, more than 80% of the farms in california are owned by individuals or by families. this is not to argue that there isn't a problem, just that the problem is a lot more complex than the usually cited "agribusiness" (how long would a farm that was not a business stay open?) or "corporate farming."
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Independent producers, as opposed to producers contracted to corporation X?

Most of our larger farms in Oregon are so contracted, and they produce a particular variety of a particular fruit/veg/grain, fertilized and pest/disease controlled by X chemicals. They may not be huge producers, in terms of tons or acreage, and they be family run, but they are not really independent. If they decide to go to a mixed crop, or a different variety, if they want to deal differently with fertilizer or pest control, they are on their own. And they are taking huge economic risks in doing that, as a rule.

Even where this is true, it is still better for the crop and easier on the land if the fields are smaller, and the crop is broken up from place to place, though better still when the crops are intermingled as much smaller truck farms generally are. Huge producers with hundreds of acres in one crop in one place are harder on the land and more vulnerable to all sorts of problems.

I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes here - some of you seem to have a stake in this; it's very much the way things are economically these days, and it's not confined to just one country, nor just one continent. I am also not saying it's a simple business, and I apologize if that is the message that is coming through; I do know it isn't.

But in terms of food quality, sustainability and also food security, it's not the best way.

Hawthorne · October 15, 2006

The LA Times ran this piece this morning, which I think is about as lucid a presentation of the facts and arguments as I have seen.
lettuce story
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Sorry for the loaded language, but it looks like my Oct. 13 report has been verified.

It is too early to know what is going on; the Times reports a large cattle operation (my words' date=' but the number of acres is substantial) surrounding spinach fields, yet the spinach farmers do not know about this.
[right']←
They do now :-(

Sure' date=' "things happen", but this scary, and not over yet.
[right']←
Nope.

russ parsons · October 16, 2006

a couple things:

regarding the cattle operation, did you also notice that it was a grazing operation, not a feedlot. there is a distinct difference. that was my point. acreage means nothing; density means everything (100 cows over 1,000 acres is bucolic; 100 cows over 1 acre is a hellhole.)

as far as corporate influence despite individual ownership, lynn, you're making my point exactly. and you can even chase it further up the ladder. individual farms work under corporate direction (it's not quite that cut-and-dried), because almost all of our produce is sold through supermarket chains and the chains can't deal with individual farmers. and all of our food is sold through supermarket chains because ... well, we consumers like convenience and low prices.

again, i'm certainly not arguing that there aren't problems, only that if we are to understand them in any meaningful way, we need to understand the full context.

perhaps, as michael pollan seems to suggest in yesterday's NYT, the best answer is a system that is not so streamlined and "efficient" and that relies on more local producers and shorter distribution chains. That undoubtedly will cause its own share of problems (cost being one that comes immediately to mind). but it's certainly a debate worth having.

jayt90 · October 16, 2006

Maybe I'm from Missouri, but I wonder if cow manure, holding ponds, and straw piles with manure can be irradiated? It may not help on a grazing ranch (we should be glad the cattle are eating grass) but how is radiation applied?

Hawthorne · October 16, 2006

a couple things:
regarding the cattle operation, did you also notice that it was a grazing operation, not a feedlot. there is a distinct difference. that was my point. acreage means nothing; density means everything (100 cows over 1,000 acres is bucolic; 100 cows over 1 acre is a hellhole.)
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Yes - but pastured cattle can foul the water supply, too, depending on various local factors - OR has begun to restrict fairly severely land use on creek and river banks, for this reason. Whether the regulations are effective or not will remain to be seen, but they are making an effort.

We don't know, of course, whether these cattle are in fact the source of the contamination - it seems like a strong coincidence, but I haven't heard any more on the issue. It's not clear to me why they didn't just test the water, or whether they did test the water, and if so what the result was - there is actually a lot that is not clear on this incident.

And others like it.

as far as corporate influence despite individual ownership' date=' lynn, you're making my point exactly. and you can even chase it further up the ladder. individual farms work under corporate direction (it's not quite that cut-and-dried), because almost all of our produce is sold through supermarket chains and the chains can't deal with individual farmers. and all of our food is sold through supermarket chains because ... well, we consumers like convenience and low prices.
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That's true. So maybe we should be asking *why* our chains can't, or won't buy locally -

It is certainly not a simple issue, and I don't mean to suggest that it is. It does seem to me that it is something we need to consider in more depth than we generally do.

Locally, we are fortunate where we live to have both a micro packer and a fully independent grocer, who do buy locally - though I think the packer is going out for a much higher percentage of his meat than he used to - all his pork is now coming from Canada, for instance. We also have a local farmer's market, and still a few (but many fewer than there used to be) farmers and gardeners offering their wares at roadside stands, so we do have rather a lot of options. We can buy locker meat, if that suits us.

Whether we will find such a happy situation when we move farther out is anybody's guess, but I won't be surprised to be stuck with Safeway; my last favorite food source. We will grow what we can. I am not labouring under the illusion that one person's dissatisfaction with the situation can shift the paradigm, even locally, nor that everyone could be growing his own, but we are very cavalier about our food, on the whole.

again' date=' i'm certainly not arguing that there aren't problems, only that if we are to understand them in any meaningful way, we need to understand the full context.
perhaps, as michael pollan seems to suggest in yesterday's NYT, the best answer is a system that is not so streamlined and "efficient" and that relies on more local producers and shorter distribution chains. That undoubtedly will cause its own share of problems (cost being one that comes immediately to mind). but it's certainly a debate worth having.
[right']←

The cost probably is one of the greater obstacles, and no doubt shorter distribution chains would have some downside - but it seems like an even greater problem, over time, to continue to centralize the production and distribution of food. We are likely to see more disease risks in meat production, and much greater risks for losing, whether from external contamination or from various kinds of failure, our produce crops.

It is folly to fall prey to the illusion that our food is magically produced in the back half of our grocery stores, and that as it is today, so must it always be.

That we should give much greater attention to our food sources seems to be a much more unpopular proposition than I'd have thought, given the increased problems which have surfaced over the last decade or so in both meat and produce. No one is immune to food dependency, it's something we all need. Though choices seem, superficially, to be icing on the cake, as we become more dependent on fewer options, the risk that something bad will happen at some point in the production or distribution of a major part of our food supply becomes greater.

We need more diversity all across the board, seems to me. I think our current state of complacency is going to bite us one day. Maybe one day soon.

Lynn

Mallet · October 16, 2006

Dr. O'Brien examined the rogue E. coli, and sure enough, discovered that it had somehow taken on the Shigella toxin gene. Moreover, in many of the E. coli, that gene was slightly altered in a way that made the bacterium produce toxin even deadlier than the original toxin made by Shigella.
No one knows exactly how the Shigella toxin genes jumped to E. coli, but Dr. O'Brien has an educated guess. Viruses that infect bacteria can sometimes pick up a gene from one bacterium and carry it to another.
But if that was the seminal event, Dr. O'Brien said, it probably did not occur in the United States, where Shigella bacteria do not have the dangerous toxin gene. Shigella in Central America do have that gene, however, and in the 1970's, that area was hit with a pandemic of Shigella dysentery. As the Shigella mixed with harmless E. coli in people's intestines, or as it mixed with harmless E. coli that inhabited animal manure, a virus may have carried Shigella toxin genes to E. coli. The result would have been a strain that had never been seen before: the toxin-armed E. coli O157:H7.
Now, it's not just the science geek in me that's fascinated by this stuff. The fact that the culprit of these contamination outbreaks is a rare but deadly mutation of a beneficial bacterium (while some sources merely call E. coli harmless, other reputable sources point out that its normal form aids significantly in digestion) means that we can't just go wiping out all sources of E. coli in the environment without negative consequences. And managing the food chain so that only the nasty O157:H7 (and a couple other deadly mutations) get wiped is a significantly more challenging task.
And it doesn't even start to address the possibility of other such mutations arising. They're bacteria, after all--they reproduce fast and mutate fairly easily.
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Cool story. The clincher, though, was presented in The Omnivore's Dilemma (feels like I'm quoting this book a lot lately .... :wink: ). Apparently this particular E. coli strain is also relatively acidophilic, which is what allows it to survive in our acidic stomachs. Normally, a cow's stomach would be relatively neutral owing to its grass diet, providing an inhospitable environment for E. coli O157:H7. Cattle primarily fed grain (mostly corn), however, possess a much lower stomach pH and, in addition to being detrimental to the cow's digestion, this greatly increases the potential for infection in humans. While the basic biology is ultra-fascinating (it better be, or else I should change programs :biggrin: ), we can't forget its interaction with policy and agricultural practice.

Edited October 16, 2006 by Mallet (log)

russ parsons · October 16, 2006

this issue is so complicated, but the stakes are high and i think it's important that we really think through every proposal before we rush to any judgements.

Yes - but pastured cattle can foul the water supply, too, depending on various local factors - OR has begun to restrict fairly severely land use on creek and river banks, for this reason. Whether the regulations are effective or not will remain to be seen, but they are making an effort.
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exactly--according to the CDC report (which is in some dispute), there was a half-mile neutral zone between the cattle and the field. how much is safe enough? in much of california (including san juan bautista), the terrain is very irregular: crops are grown on bottom land and cattle are grazed on hillsides that won't support crops. so who loses their right to use their land? and isn't that pushing us in the direction of micro-culture?

That's true. So maybe we should be asking *why* our chains can't, or won't buy locally - Whether we will find such a happy situation when we move farther out is anybody's guess, but I won't be surprised to be stuck with Safeway; my last favorite food source. We will grow what we can. I am not labouring under the illusion that one person's dissatisfaction with the situation can shift the paradigm, even locally, nor that everyone could be growing his own, but we are very cavalier about our food, on the whole.
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Chains don't buy from local farmers for the same reasons that most of us don't go to separate butchers, produce shops, dairy shops, bread shops and fishmongers. it's damned inconvenient--maybe even impossibly inconvenient for the supermarket. If you've got 300 stores, it takes a LOT of produce to supply you. No reasonable farm could do it alone.

and while we foodies may scorn supermarkets and the farming they require, it's important that we also acknowledge what they have accomplished--hunger has been all but eradicated in this country (the real thing, i'm not going to argue about the spiritual kind). If you want to break up those supply chains and introduce inefficiencies in the name of quality and good health, you should also acknowledge that you're calling for higher food prices, which will inevitably mean some people are going to go hungry.

i'm not ready to come down on one side or the other, but we can't pretend that there is a simple fix that will make everything better.

Ohba · October 17, 2006

and while we foodies may scorn supermarkets and the farming they require, it's important that we also acknowledge what they have accomplished--hunger has been all but eradicated in this country.
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That's a bold claim. I don't think even supermarkets have tried to cop credit for that yet.

FabulousFoodBabe · October 17, 2006

Lets bring back the victory gardens.
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Yes, yes!

This whole e coli thing has given my sons more ammo than they need: "Are you sure this lettuce didn't come from a place that maybe bags some and sells some in heads? Where is the bagging actually done -- at the grocery store or in the field? Hmmmm?" :sad: I did it to them -- made them think about their food. But they do have a point.

Hawthorne · October 17, 2006

and while we foodies may scorn supermarkets and the farming they require, it's important that we also acknowledge what they have accomplished--hunger has been all but eradicated in this country.
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That's a bold claim. I don't think even supermarkets have tried to cop credit for that yet.
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Agribiz has, though. Any time a question is asked regarding the wisdom of this kind of food production/distribution, they claim that it's the only way to feed the world. Not just this country - the world.

The thing is, it's not a foodie issue. Someone upthread was talking about living on cabbage without agribiz - but that is a *result* of being dependent on agribiz, in that local producers have gone away. It's a 'fix' for a non-problem.

And I wouldn't be too complacent about an absence of hunger in this country, either. Soup kitchens, gleaner organizations and other charitable distributers have more patrons than ever. Many people are eating an incredibly poor diet, not because there are food shortages, nor because they can't afford better, but because they eat according to food company PR and advertising.

And much of the time crunch that drives people to packaged food is also manufactured - it takes no longer to make hamburger and gravy and dump it over noodles than to make hamburger helper - even if you get fancy and chop some fresh veg into it.

It is a very complex issue, but not one that belongs to foodies, particularly. But that brings another aspect of the thing to mind - what exactly is a foodie?

If a foodie is someone who takes an interest in food beyond having a belly full of something that works as fuel on at least a semi regular basis, then I guess I'm guilty as charged. In reality, food is necessary to all of us, and it shouldn't be necessary to make it a kind of hobby to insure that you are eating a diet broader than cabbage, or hamburger helper, or that you be able to cook something more sophisticated than a grilled cheese sandwich.

Good news in the Oregonian this morning, though - seems the lettuce is safe; the eColi involved in the lettuce contamination is not a lethal strain.

I just don't find the news all that comforting. It doesn't resolve the spinach issue. It doesn't answer any questions. Just all is well, your lettuce is safe, business as usual.

Until the next time, of course.

russ parsons · October 17, 2006

Someone upthread was talking about living on cabbage without agribiz - but that is a *result* of being dependent on agribiz, in that local producers have gone away. It's a 'fix' for a non-problem.
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This is nice in theory but falls short in practice. Granted, we're cool here on the West Coast and in some other temperate growing areas. But read any account of life in the Northeast and northern Midwest prior to the railroad. While it is true that some crops could be grown under cover during the winter months, there wouldn't be nearly enough to support the populations that live in those areas today.

And again, please, let's stop talking about "agribiz". Any farmer has to be in business in order to survive. And any solution that we might propose has to acknowledge that reality. Using catchphrases does nothing to further intelligent debate; it only makes it appear that there may be simple solutions to these complex problems.

And I wouldn't be too complacent about an absence of hunger in this country, either. Soup kitchens, gleaner organizations and other charitable distributers have more patrons than ever. Many people are eating an incredibly poor diet, not because there are food shortages, nor because they can't afford better, but because they eat according to food company PR and advertising.
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I'm certainly not complacent about the absence of hunger, but I am asking that at the same time we criticize the modern state of food, that we acknowledge what has been accomplished. Name another civilization where for the vast majority of the population, the biggest health problem was too many calories, not too few.

And it is certainly true that some people still have poor diets, but as you point out, for the most part, that is personal choice. Certainly you and I believe these are bad choices; it may even be, as you seem to suggest, that it is because these people are not smart enough to know what is good for them. But at least they have the choice.

phaelon56 · October 17, 2006

without arguing in favor of contamination, let's try to remember that these are living plants that are grown outdoors amongst the birds and wild beasts and then are harvested and packed by minimum wage workers. all it takes is one guy forgetting to wash his hands after a potty break and you're in trouble. to my mind, the real issue is the scale at which these things are done, which amplifies the risks of even a minor slip-up into a national concern.
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Long before bagged greens and pre-cut vegetables were available in supermarkets I spent a summer as a farm laborer on a tomato ranch in California's Central Valley. It may be different today with various types of FDA or other federal oversight (although I doubt it) but back then, out in the fields, there were no Port-A-Sans, no running water and Purel hand sanitizer had not yet been invented.

The tomato fields were 1/2 mile wide and 1 mile long.

Where do you think people went for their potty breaks? (hint - no one walked very far) .

Granted, we were growing tomatoes that went straight to a cannery after being harvested, but I think the fundamental problems intoroduced by the scale of such operations have grown more profound with time.

azureus · October 17, 2006

Chains don't buy from local farmers for the same reasons that most of us don't go to separate butchers, produce shops, dairy shops, bread shops and fishmongers. it's damned inconvenient--maybe even impossibly inconvenient for the supermarket. If you've got 300 stores, it takes a LOT of produce to supply you. No reasonable farm could do it alone.
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The problem isn't insurmountable. Where I live in eastern South Dakota, local produce is available seasonally at the Hy-Vee grocery chain and at the super Wal-Marts. These stores make it a selling point. The most common local products offered are green beans, sweet corn and pumpkins. Several varieties of melons that are grown in Forestburg, SD are offered seasonally as well. I've also seen apples from Minnesota, so they're at least "mid-western" apples.

For consumers, Farmer's Markets are a good compromise. When all of the local producers congregate in one location it becomes nearly as convenient to shop there, and buy locally, as it is to shop at a large chain. This only works in the warm months here, however. During the winter, we're more than happy to rely on fresh fruit and veggies shipped in from California and elsewhere.

However, reliance on local produce isn't guaranteed to prevent the next outbreak of e-coli or anyother food-bornes disease. It just means that the outbreak won't be spread across half of the country.

April

Hawthorne · October 17, 2006

Someone upthread was talking about living on cabbage without agribiz - but that is a *result* of being dependent on agribiz, in that local producers have gone away. It's a 'fix' for a non-problem.
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This is nice in theory but falls short in practice. Granted, we're cool here on the West Coast and in some other temperate growing areas. But read any account of life in the Northeast and northern Midwest prior to the railroad. While it is true that some crops could be grown under cover during the winter months, there wouldn't be nearly enough to support the populations that live in those areas today.
Huh? People were living in temperate and even cold climates in high concentrations long before corporate food production became the norm. Large farms were supplemented with personal production to some extent, but neither the climate nor the population prevented people from being fed.
I agree that daily shopping is a pain, but I am not objecting to refrigerators and freezers. It would be much easier if one didn't have to go so far to shop, but how far away the shopping is depends a lot on where you live.
I grew up in Eastern Canada where the growing season is short. Yes, we did have canners in those days, but commercial canneries didn't appear until early in the last century. Canned food was originally invented and produced for the french military early in the 19th century. It took some time to get to the point where it became an economically viable proposition for feeding the masses, and much longer before canneries were in a position to contract farmers to buy whole crops. That's a pretty recent development, historically speaking. But there are large cities in many areas of the world where cold climates preclude growing food except for a short growing season. Many of them are much older than corporate food production and distribution.
And again, please, let's stop talking about "agribiz". Any farmer has to be in business in order to survive. And any solution that we might propose has to acknowledge that reality. Using catchphrases does nothing to further intelligent debate; it only makes it appear that there may be simple solutions to these complex problems.
Call it corporate food production if it makes you happier. The issue is that the production is both limited and centralized, which is not a healthy situation. Other considerations aside, when the national (global sooner than you think) food supply is controlled by a small handful of entities, your food supply is not secure. This is the stuff of which famines are made.
And I wouldn't be too complacent about an absence of hunger in this country, either. Soup kitchens, gleaner organizations and other charitable distributers have more patrons than ever. Many people are eating an incredibly poor diet, not because there are food shortages, nor because they can't afford better, but because they eat according to food company PR and advertising.
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I'm certainly not complacent about the absence of hunger, but I am asking that at the same time we criticize the modern state of food, that we acknowledge what has been accomplished. Name another civilization where for the vast majority of the population, the biggest health problem was too many calories, not too few.
The problem stems mostly from the source of the calories; to wit, over processed carbs paired with the cheapest possible fats. If you are suggesting that without corporate food production and distribution we would be looking at starvation, I don't buy it. Most famines are generated by political issues, not agricultural issues, and historically this has been the case.
The Middle East has been feeding large populations for centuries, in fact the first chicken batteries known were found in Egypt much earlier than that. But entire continents were not dependent on a single producer. China and Japan have both fed large populations without resorting to being supplied by a very few huge producers.
So I'm not altogether convinced that we have accomplished all that much.
And it is certainly true that some people still have poor diets, but as you point out, for the most part, that is personal choice. Certainly you and I believe these are bad choices; it may even be, as you seem to suggest, that it is because these people are not smart enough to know what is good for them. But at least they have the choice.
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It's a heavily weighted choice. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the food refiners' budget goes to advertising. Much of what we spend on food has nothing to do with food, and everything to do with promotion and packaging. Much of what we spend for produce goes for transportation. I won't open the can of worms packed in fuel oil issues.
We (I refer now to my family) eat the way we do because we eat what we grew up on, essentially. Much of this is habit; even when everyone in the household has been employed outside the home we have done a lot of cooking. But the cultural pressure to schedule every minute of every day in some 'productive' activity (often productive for someone else), leads people away from eating together, and away from cooking what they eat from scratch. This is reinforced by the idea that 'fast' food (often no faster than scratch preparation) is at least as good as anything you can make, if not better.
It is certainly not a simple issue, and I am not trying to make it so. If you are happy with the situation, then nothing I can say will change your mind. Nor can you change my belief that it is not a healthy way to feed people in the long term.
In the long term, centralized food production is a risky choice, and more a matter of food security and public health than whether or not we can buy asparagus all over the continent year round.
It's an opinion, yes. I don't expect everyone to agree, but I hope that people who hadn't thought much about it might give the position some consideration.
Raw produce shouldn't be a major health risk. That is the immediate topic here. But the issue is much broader.

russ parsons · October 17, 2006

First of all, thanks everybody for making this such a lively debate. And please let me emphasize that my interest here is not in defending the status quo. there is no question that there are serious problems that need to be addressed. My interest is in keeping the solutions from being worse than the problem and the best way to that is through an informed debate.

there is no bigger supporter of farmers markets and of alternative agriculture than me. i have been reporting on them for 20 years and it is the topic of my next book. the changes that have occurred over the last 10 years have been wonderful and i am encouraged that it only seems to be growing.

i find it really remarkable that so many small grocery chains are now supplementing their produce through local farmers. while this will never supplant big ag, it at least offers an alternative, in season.

the same is true of the proliferation of farmers markets. i don't think there's a state that doesn't have at least a couple. granted, most of them operate only on a seasonal basis, but that is still more than what was there before.

these things represent real change, not the least of which is allowing small farmers to make enough money that they can stay in the "agribusiness".

but while i support all of these things as a complement, i'm afraid i don't see them as supplanting the system that now exists. certainly, people lived in inhospitable areas before the railroad (though not nearly so many of them as now). and take a look at what they ate for six months out of the year and take a look at the labor that was involved in preparing it.

i hardly think it likely that the majority of americans will embrace that any time soon. so, unless we can institute some kind of culinary/agricultural dictatorship, i think we need to explore other ideas.

let's go back to the starting point of this discussion--the problems with supposedly contaminated produce. what would you propose to do about it, in a real-world environment? (and, just for the record phaelon, porta-potties are a legal requirement now, though, of course, laws have been known to be broken).

Darcie B · October 17, 2006

This is nice in theory but falls short in practice. Granted, we're cool here on the West Coast and in some other temperate growing areas. But read any account of life in the Northeast and northern Midwest prior to the railroad. While it is true that some crops could be grown under cover during the winter months, there wouldn't be nearly enough to support the populations that live in those areas today.
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Although I agree with most points in your posts, I disagree with this one for at least part of the northern Midwest. The population of North Dakota has remained relatively stable since about 1910. Up until the 50s or so, most of what people ate was produced on the farm, with the exception of coffee, sugar and the like (although lots of sugar is now produced in ND). It easily fed the entire population and they ate pretty well, from what I have learned from my grandmother and great-aunts. They canned a lot of produce from their gardens (no freezers in the 30s), dug out root cellars to store potatoes, carrots and other long lasting produce, had their grain milled at a nearby mill, and of course had plenty of livestock to munch on. In the relatively sparsely-populated upper Midwest, supporting the local population on locally-grown foods would not be difficult, especially with modern freezing and canning methods. There wouldn't be any coffee and citrus if it were strictly locally grown foods, but that would be true of most of the U.S.

Of course I am not advocating that people give up citrus, coffee or anything just to eat locally, but more could be done in this area across the U.S. that could benefit small farmers and perhaps cut down on transportation and processing costs in the bargain. I sense that more is being done, but that the steps are very small.

russ parsons · October 17, 2006

darcie,

No. 1: the big push of railroad transportation began in the 1880s and 1890s and was well established by 1910. i think if you will compare populations pre-1890s and today there would be a great difference (in fact, I know there is: the population of North Dakota increased by 80% from 1900 to 1910).

No. 2: what people ate because they had no alternative does not apply to what people would be willing to accept today.

i have some personal experience with this. my dad was raised in north dakota and his father ran a grocery store. the mere mention of the word "rutabaga" is enough to make him break out in hives.

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