Nuclear spinach? No, thanks just the same
When did we begin to regard our food as the enemy?
A few well-publicized food scares in recent years certainly
contributed their share. Now just about everybody knows E. coli
isn’t somebody who played two seasons at right field for the Fresno
Giants.
Nuclear spinach? No, thanks just the same
When did we begin to regard our food as the enemy?
A few well-publicized food scares in recent years certainly contributed their share. Now just about everybody knows E. coli isn’t somebody who played two seasons at right field for the Fresno Giants.
Once upon a time, the stuff we ate didn’t travel to great big packing plants where it intermingled with produce grown in countless other locations only to be packaged, branded and shipped 2,000 miles. People may have taken it for granted but they had a relationship with their food and the people who produced it.
And they had sense enough to wash their food because they knew where it came from. Years ago a neighbor boy used to drop by for visits while I gardened. One day, the kindergarten-aged kid watched as I forked stable sweepings into the vegetable beds.
“What’s that stuff?” he asked.
“Horse poop,” I replied. When I asked if he wanted to bring some produce home to Mom, he quickly declined.
But I’d guess he had the presence of mind to rinse his greens after that.
Then comes the news this week that the federal Food and Drug Administration cleared the way to use irradiation to treat produce. Lots of the stuff we eat has been cleared for irradiation treatment for years. Wheat flour, a variety of meats and poultry and even the spices we buy may have been irradiated.
When a person with ties to agriculture exclaimed “isn’t it great!” Tuesday morning, I’m afraid my reply was a little terse.
I’m not happy about irradiated lettuce and spinach, not happy at all.
And it’s not because I’m afraid the stuff will set my intestines to glowing, but because I am convinced the industry already does its best to bring us healthy, safe food.
I’m afraid that, if consumers fearful of their own food embrace irradiation, it will become one more expensive step that favors big ag over small family farmers.
I’m more afraid that it will become even more difficult for consumers to support local agriculture by patronizing small, community based farmers.
And I know that the industry will do its utmost not to inform consumers that their food has had a nuclear bath.
The industry already fights source labeling, so we often don’t know that our food has traveled across international borders. The genetically modified food we buy is not labeled thanks to the industry. GMO foods are required to be identified throughout the European Economic Union, and as a result, consumers largely shun them there.
Our irrational fear of our food stemming from the panic that followed a 2006 scare connected to locally produced spinach already burdened producers with the cost of installing questionable barrier fencing. Now are they going to feel compelled to swallow the expense of nuclear technology?
I think we all need to relax, take standard steps to ensure our food is clean, and then eat our vegetables.
