Lettuce Recalled Over E. Coli Concerns

[jayt90]

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.

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There lots of foods used to get people through the winter, not always obvious to us.

Such as: Lutefish, saltfish, kimchi, sauerkraut, pemmican, Chinese cabbage, root vegs, oatmeal, and any number of canned, fermented, smoked, dried, and pressed foods, many unique to each country with a winter.

We can easily expand our cold weather options, wihout leaning so heavily on warmer climates.

[russ parsons]

you know, i think that would be a terrific blog, or even a book. someone from "up there" trying to eat seasonally for an entire year. why don't you do it?

[barolo]

you know, i think that would be a terrific blog, or even a book. someone from "up there" trying to eat seasonally for an entire year. why don't you do it?

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Some Vancouverites - not quite the "up there" you are talking about, I know - did blog and write a book about it: The 100 Mile Diet

[Anna N]

you know, i think that would be a terrific blog, or even a book. someone from "up there" trying to eat seasonally for an entire year. why don't you do it?

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Our aboriginal peoples did it long before we arrived. They were hunters and gatherers and they lived hard and died young. I feel absolutely no compulsion repeat their experience.

[Hawthorne]

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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He has my brother's sympathy - I learned (after hating them for most of my childhood) to like them, but my brother won't touch them to this day, and he says that brussels sprouts make him gag. These were a winter staple for us, too.

I am not by any means suggesting that people go back to eating only what can be raised within a few miles of them, only that to be as dependent as we are on centralized corporate production is foolhardy. I'm suggesting that there needs to be a lot more middle ground.

So far as the issue of what to do about the ecoli contamination of produce - it seems to me that we first have to know what is causing the contamination. Vague indictments of cattle grazing nearby, or possible contamination of harvesting blades doesn't give us enough information as to the cause to offer possible solutions for the future. So far all we have on this is pure speculation, and seems to me to be designed to placate consumers without actually doing anything constructive about future prevention.

Porta potties are now required in fields that are manually picked, that's true, but the strains of ecoli which are causing the contamination problem are not being generated in human waste, if I understand the thing correctly.

As I recall, one of the first contaminations we heard of nationally was on grapes imported from Chile. This prompted an outcry about lack of production quality control in foreign countries, but didn't stem the tide of such imports, nor do I ever recall hearing how the contamination came about. We have had a number of these incidents since, some in imported produce, some domestic, but I don't recall a single instance where the cause was clearly identified. Plans to label food by country of origin is a popular idea, which I support, but it doesn't truly address the issue of how produce is contaminated, wherever it might be grown, and is probably a sop to keep consumers quiet. I think it would be interesting to know how such imports come to us.

Are they yet another Dole or other corporate production, or a crop purchased off shore by United Grocers or another middleman?

It is true that farmer's markets are flourishing and there are still independent grocers in many places which buy local produce in season, but not all by any means. We also have organic options now, and at the moment these alternatives are doing well.

But the USDA tried pretty hard a few years ago to take the teeth out of State organic certifications, by imposing a Federal Standard which essentially said that if a grower found at some point during the season that he needed chemicals or pesticides, he could use them on his crop and still label it organic. The organic growers who were meeting stringent state regulations at the time screamed blue murder and let their customers know about this, and most of these 'exemptions' were dumped after people expressed their outrage. This was not a widely publicized issue, and many people were unaware of it, as people are now unaware of the current effort to write a 'standard' for pasture fed and range meat - with similar huge loopholes which will, if the regulations go through as originally written, render labels which say pasture/grass/range fed meaningless. Consumers have not been, and will not be, consulted about these issues. USDA information on many of these issues is vague and sometimes outright misleading, and to blindly trust the government to protect the food supply seems foolhardy.

Given the public support for alternate food sources that do exist, wouldn't you expect better government support for same? But we don't have it. On the contrary, government appears to be actively undermining alternate sources.

I'm waiting with considerable interest to hear exactly how the spinach and lettuce were contaminated. I'm not holding my breath, though. I think the goal is not to look any more closely at it than absolutely necessary to keep the public quiet, and to bury the issue as soon as possible. And without a lot more information, I don't see how any solution can be formulated.

[russ parsons]

yeah boy, remember that Chilean grape deal? that was a weird one. if we're talking about the same thing, it was a couple of cyanide pellets hidden in grapes that had been imported.

as far as government goes, i think it is still bound to the mindset of "safe, cheap, plentiful," which is not to be dismissed. It's the "safe" part that worries me, because I'm afraid that when they focus on that, the "cheap" and "plentiful" parts will dictate an industrial solution, such as irradiation. and then we're headed even further down the highway of consolidation of agriculture, because there will only be a few packers who can afford the investment in equipment.

The irony is, I think we're really at a point where things are beginning to work themselves out. granted that alternative agriculture (farmers markets, small produce markets) only accounts for less than 5% of production, that's still a big increase from 10 years ago. And more to the point, it's a fairly profitable segment (relatively speaking, mainly because most fruit and vegetable farming is so unprofitable).

[Hawthorne]

yeah boy, remember that Chilean grape deal? that was a weird one. if we're talking about the same thing, it was a couple of cyanide pellets hidden in grapes that had been imported.

Yes ... going back, the whole thing is even more bizarre than I had recalled, but there was no actual resolution on that - Chilean produce just magically reappeared and people happily bought it. Obviously it worked out fine, but ...

I did glean the fact that the produce was being grown by Chilean growers, which answers one of my questions on that score.

as far as government goes, i think it is still bound to the mindset of "safe, cheap, plentiful," which is not to be dismissed. It's the "safe" part that worries me, because I'm afraid that when they focus on that, the "cheap" and "plentiful" parts will dictate an industrial solution, such as irradiation. and then we're headed even further down the highway of consolidation of agriculture, because there will only be a few packers who can afford the investment in equipment.

We really are on the same page. This really is my concern - though irradiation is not the only proposition in hand which could lead to this outcome.

The irony is, I think we're really at a point where things are beginning to work themselves out. granted that alternative agriculture (farmers markets, small produce markets) only accounts for less than 5% of production, that's still a big increase from 10 years ago. And more to the point, it's a fairly profitable segment (relatively speaking, mainly because most fruit and vegetable farming is so unprofitable).

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And again. I think though, looking at the new proposals to insure safety, disease control, security - that if we don't actively express our support for these alternatives (support in the way of buying them works only as long as they are available), we could lose them.

There is an alarming trend in the direction of USDA regulation which will make these enterprises much more difficult to sustain, if we are not careful. It's hard to know just what is driving this; the stated goals 'disease control', 'food security' and 'national security' figure prominently, but don't gibe with the written regulations. As irradiation requirements could bury smaller produce farmers, so RFID tagging could bury small meat and poultry producers - and before I commit to something like irradiation to deal with bacterial contamination, I really do want to know a lot more about how the contamination is happening.

But I think the bottom line is, we should beware the effect of unintended consequences.