American regulators are going crazy. Their new field is food production. They are sending out factory health inspectors to the fields, and they are demanding laboratory sterility conditions. No wild animals are allowed, no children under five (diapers!) are allowed, identification cards have to be used in the fields.
The Food and Drug Administration lists 40 food-borne pathogens. Among the more common: E-coli O157:H7, salmonella, listeria, campylobacter, botulism and hepatitis A.
June 2009: E. coli O157:H7 found in Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough manufactured in Danville, Va., resulted in the recall of 3.6 million packages. Seventy-two people in 30 states were sickened. No traces found on equipment or workers; investigators are looking at flour and other ingredients.
October 2008: Salmonella found in peanut butter from a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Georgia. Nine people died, and an estimated 22,500 were sickened. Criminal negligence was alleged after the product tested positive and was shipped.
June 2008: Salmonella Saintpaul traced to serrano peppers grown in Mexico. More than 1,000 people were sickened in 41 states, with 203 reported hospitalizations and at least one death. Tomatoes were suspected, devastating growers.
April 2007: E. coli O157:H7 found in beef, sickening 14 people. United Food Group recalled 5.7 million pounds of meat.
December 2006: E. coli O157:H7 traced to Taco Bell restaurants in New Jersey and Long Island, N.Y. Green onions suspected, then lettuce. Thirty-nine people were sickened, some with acute kidney failure.
September 2006: E. coli O157:H7 found in Dole bagged spinach processed at Earthbound Farms in San Juan Bautista (San Benito County). The outbreak killed four people, sent 103 to hospitals, and devastated the spinach industry.
I am shocked, but this may be the way of the future. Europeans will surely follow in no time. Israel, a large food exporter, will have to comply.
Experts knowing what is required will be in demand. I am already an expert in Legionella prevention. Now a whole vast field for regulation compliance is opening up for the Secret Engineer and his office to exploit. If I only had time...
14 comments:
This is third hand, but I remember hearing a story from a friend that his mother used to have to receive large shipments of lettuce and occasionally the heads of lettuce would have blood on them. According to the story the filed hands would sometimes fight, and the fights could turn deadly fast, with one of the farmhands pulling a knife. Actually, I think lettuce pickers carry knives to harvest the produce.
Latteisland has a post where she shows the Japanese growing lettuce in near laboratory conditions indoor in warehouse, without soil as far as I know. link
With our immune systems under-stimulated, we will all end up with auto-immune diseases and Hodgkins Disease.
There is no pendulum that doesn't swing too far.
Anon.
The Japanese lettuce strikes me as unnatural. Is that the future?
No, growing children in test tubes is the future!
Maybe this will pave the way for Israel to import a sense of road-safety.
Rashkov, this is the second time you've mentioned Israel's roads, are they really that dangerous?
If I remember correctly you live in New Jersey, so the drivers there have to be nuts, much like or worse than Israel.
Thanks for pointing that out -- I don't have an objective measure of how bad their roads are, but that's the impression I have. Maybe J can enlighten us.
Last weekend was exceptionally bloody: 18 dead on the roads. Average 600 dead people per year. The population is about 7 million. I cant say if it is high or low.
Most of the fatalities are caused by Arab drivers, who are first generation from small villages (they have no experience with vehicles) and are used to disregard laws in general and traffic laws in particular (they drive without licence). Israeli police tries to avoid antagonizing the Arab population.
My impression of drivers in the entire country is that they drive with emotional belligerence typical of the middle east.
Most troubling is the culture: seatbelts? why, we'll go to war tomorrow, so what's the use?
This page says that 41k people die on US roads every year.
No, we use seatbelts. Simply, it is lack familiarity with the car culture.
This page gives the accident rate per capita and per miles driven for each OECD country.
"Israel, a large food exporter, will have to comply."
Israel might export SOME foods, but the country is still entirely dependent on food imports - Israel imports at least 75% of its staple food supplies if I'm not mistaken.
You are not only mistaken, you dont even know what the issue is.
No country, and not Israel, is selfsufficient in food production. It would be crazy for Israel to compete with Argentina or Brazil in meat production, and with the USA in soya bean or wheat. These are cheap commodities that can be safely bought on the world market. Israel produces quality and high value niche food products, to expost mostly to the European market. The value of its exports is much higher that it food imports.
In everything there is an overproduction in Israel: eggs, milk, vegetables, even basic grains.
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