Corporate Food

Stories about tainted pet food should get us all thinking about how we all can be affected by the centralization and globalization of food production. Many people are commenting about how surprised they were to learn that one pet food company manufactured food for many different brands. And they all could have been affected by what people think was tainted wheat gluten imported from China.

It's not a whole lot different with human processed food. It made me think about how easy it would be for a well-placed terrorist to poison human food products.

But it doesn't even take a terrorist. It used to be that, when people got sick from food, it was an isolated event, like a family reunion or a company picnic. Food was bought and prepared from local or regional sources.

Now, spinach at a farm in California can be exposed to E. coli from a neighboring cattle farm, mixed together with bunches of other leaves, and sent to grocery stores all around America. One cow with E. coli can be mixed together with meat from hundreds of other cows, ground together, and show up in hamburger in dozens of states. It gives new urgency to the advice to "eat local." It doesn't mean you won't get sick, but it does lessen the number of sources from which your food comes. And the more different sources of your food, the increasing risk that at least one of them would have the potential of contamination.