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Is Organic Food Necessarily Safer?
What happened at Peanut Corp. was not the fault of the FDA and more government regulation will not solve America's food safety problems. It is the responsibility of every food processor to know their supplier and no, relying on a certificate or a contract packer's say-so is not enough. How many of the companies that made these recalled products ever visited Peanut Corp.? How many of them walked the production floor? Until a food company can tell me it knows its suppliers, I'm not buying.
Is Organic Food Necessarily Safer?
I find it very odd that anyone would consider "organic" to mean something like "kosher" or "specially handled" or "magically repellent/free of potential pathogens." I've never heard any organic food producer or label claim that their product was somehow "safer" except for being drug free. An organic apple is going to me just as susceptible to getting bug crap or feral pig crap on it as one coated in pesticide and they all rot just the same.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that you'd frankly have to be an idiot to make such an assumption....a feat of several massive leaps in logic and a lot more ignorance about food production & agriculture.
This somehow reminds me of a 20-year-old I was talking to at a party who said that she recently gave up meat since she had only recently realized that an animal had to die to make a steak or chicken breast. The Idiocracy won't happen in 500 years, it's been here for a while. Stay in school!
The NYT's and NBC's of this country are neurotic fear mongers of the highest sort, and it seems that a lot of people like the taste of what they're cooking.
Is Organic Food Necessarily Safer?
Great discussion. There are plenty of things everyone along the food chain - farmers, brokers, processors, distributors, and retailers - can do to preserve the microbiological safety of the food we eat. Food safety is fundamentally not about marketing designations like organic, local, sustainable, kosher, halal, etc. Its about whether or not the food safety risks have been properly controlled. Just because you can theoretically see your local organic farmer's face at the farmer's market, doesn't mean that he or she knows anything about managing the microbiological safety of the food or that he or she has made the personal commitment to do so. Food that's grown outside under God's blue sky will never be perfectly safe to eat - there are too many variables. But the farmer and others along the food chain can minimize the risks by learning about and applying sound food safety principles. There probably is some value in us, as consumers, buying food that has had a shorter food chain - i.e. buying directly from the farmer - because there have simply been fewer people in the mix and less opportunity for someone to screw something up. But being able to see the farmer is not a guarantee of safety.
Is Organic Food Necessarily Safer?
Our farmers markets are not even open in the winter months, there is NOWHERE to get a local apple where I live most of the winter, or a local squash, or anything else local. I do try to eat what's seasonal at that time. For example, citrus when it's in season instead of all year round. While not local, at least it's seasonal and is usually cheaper at that time.
The only local foods we can get all year round are dairy products and meat, which I buy plenty of, but it's not a very balanced diet.
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What happened at Peanut Corp. was not the fault of the FDA and more government regulation will not solve America's food safety problems. It is the responsibility of every food processor to know their supplier and no, relying on a certificate or a contract packer's say-so is not enough. How many of the companies that made these recalled products ever visited Peanut Corp.? How many of them walked the production floor? Until a food company can tell me it knows its suppliers, I'm not buying.