Class on meal planning in the home economics building at Iowa State College, Ames, Iowa. May 1942. Jack Delano, photographer. Photograph from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945, Collection, American Memory Collection, Library of Congress.
For most consumers, food safety is an encompassing term, referring to the sanitary purity and cleanliness of produce and meats as they make their way from the farm to the home or restaurant and finally to the table where they are eaten. So many considerations relate to food safety that the US Government has a cross-agency gateway to bring all food safety issues to one Internet portal.
Food safety issues include whether the plant or animal is cloned, whether pesticides are applied to crops (which we will discuss in a separate article), whether growth hormones and antibiotics are added to animal feeds, whether regulations regarding pesticides and fertilizers are scientifically sound, whether inspectors are diligently doing their jobs, whether produce is contaminated with harmful bacteria from wild animals or unsanitary farm workers, whether distributors or markets safely handle food when packaging and displaying it, whether restaurants prepare food so to as minimize cross-contamination in sanitary kitchens.
Food safety also pertains to the consumer's handling and consumption of food. Home kitchens need to be sanitary--food preparation surfaces, knives, platters and bowls--and free of vermin and their droppings. The cook's hands must be clean and frequently washed. Raw foods need to be cooked to kill harmful micro-organisms. When a person eats food, their hands and nails must be clean of dirt, toilet waste, and other contamination. Food safety issues are complicated, ranging across a wide variety of persons with different jobs and responsibilities toward the produce and meats and fish that end up in the consumer's mouth.
Cooking Demonstration, Farmers Market, Riverside, California, 2007
It is not obvious how local food per se fits into all the food safety and pesticide issues. Purchasing and consuming local food, rather than commodity foods, does not automatically minimize most of the risks to food safety. Indeed, local foods sold at a farmer's market can be less clean than industrially processed commodity foods.
Let's look at the case of fresh-cut, packaged, ready-to-eat salad greens. In 2006, salad spinach raised major food safety concerns after (as it turned out) feral pigs contaminated several central California spinach growing fields with harmful e. coli in their waste. Millions of bags of spinach were removed from grocers' shelves and, no doubt, consumers threw away the bags of spinach in their homes.
Would purchasing local salad greens avoid such a health risk as presented by nationally distributed bagged greens? Not necessarily. Both the corporate distributors of such produce and state consumer health agencies consider the big commodity farmer/producers of bagged, ready-to-eat salads to have highly effective cleaning and sanitizing procedures for their greens. After all, the pig e. coli contamination was an exception to a generally reliably safe, nationally distributed commodity. Distributors like Del Monte and Dole do not recommend re-washing ready-to-eat fresh-cut, bagged salads. Producers wash greens in large washing machines, not unlike top-loading clothes washing machines, usually three times in chlorine baths. The washing removes dirt and sand and microorganisms that cling to the greens and the chlorine further sanitizes the produce by killing bacteria. California's state department of consumer affairs recommends that consumers eat the ready-to-eat, bagged, salad greens without washing them again at home, as they are far more likely to be sanitary straight from the bag than greens washed in home kitchens. Here is an instance in which the high capital costs associated with cleaning, preparing, and packaging sanitary, salad greens favors the large corporate grower/producer in California over the local farmer.
Similar considerations relate to butchered meats. Hamburger has been a major issue for a number of years. Here again, factory slaughter methods require a great deal of capital. Regulations restrict slaughter to healthy cattle and cows. Butchering is automated with a minimum of human participation. Processing the meat into a food, such as hamburger, is controlled by computers and tested for sanitary quality at points along the line. The slaughter of animals whose meat is to be sold in interstate commerce is regulated by the USDA and each carcass is inspected by a federal inspector.
Ivan Jarrell cooking deer steaks. December 5, 1996. Lyntha Scott, photographer. From the ethnographic collection, Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia. American Memory Collection, Library of Congress.
On the other hand, farm-slaughtered animals and local slaughter houses, when the meats are not sold in interstate commerce, are regulated by the state, not the USDA. They are personal use facilities. The consumer purchases the animal and arranges for its slaughter. The problem with this arrangement is that small slaughter houses might not have the quality control and sanitary procedures in place to ensure a healthy food product.
The philosophy behind the lack of federal inspection at a personal use facility and for sales at the farm gate is that the consumer can know the producer personally and can inspect the processing and slaughtering facilities. This is a fine philosophy, but in reality, would most consumers, who are unfamiliar with slaughtering, personally inspect the slaughter house and observe the slaughtering and butchering? My guess is that most consumers would be uncomfortable observing slaughtering. And if they did watch the slaughtering and butchering of their personally purchased animal, would they be sufficiently knowledgeable to know when unsanitary or risky procedures were being followed?
For the consumer, the decision whether to buy local produce and meat or nationally distributed commodity produce and meat should hinge on the consumer's ability to judge the risks to food safety in both venues.
On the one hand, USDA regulations and inspections and the enormous capital investment of commodity producers assures the consumer that most of the time the commodity products will reach the markets in sanitary condition. On the other hand, when a breakdown in the production of commodity food occurs and unsanitary food enters the distribution pipelines, the consequences can be major and national. The recent recall of millions of pounds of possibly tainted hamburger from a packing plant in Chino, California, is precisely the kind of event that drives consumers to local producers.
Here again, the question is, would the consumer be sufficiently knowledgeable to know when local producers employ unsafe or unsanitary procedures? Would a consumer recognize unsanitary foods displayed on a table at a farmer's market?
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