Tuesday, September 19, 2006
E. coli 0157:H7
By Alton Brown

It’s 11:30 pm on Monday night and as of 1pm today 114 persons are infected with E. coli 0157:H7 in 21 states. According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention here’s the breakdown:

California (1)
Connecticut(2)
Idaho (4)
Illinois (1)
Indiana [8]
Kentucky (6)
Maine (2)
Michigan (4)
Minnesota (2)
Nebraska (1)
New Mexico (5)
Nevada (1)
New York (7)
Ohio (10)
Oregon (5)
Pennsylvania (4)
Utah (15)
Virginia (1)
Washington (2)
Wisconsin (32)
Wyoming (1)

In short, a lot of people are sick and one person has died in Wisconsin. This is a bad thing. And yet, it was going to happen. It was bound to happen.

I don’t want to sound like some crazy, anti-establishment bio-terrorist but maybe, just maybe this is a wakeup call. Truth is our food system has major flaws which point to one reoccurring theme: too much of our food is produced by centralized, industrial concerns. At this hour the continued suspicion is that the spinach, which may have been infected by irrigation water in a field, incorrectly composted manure used as fertilizer on organic crops, or by water used in processing. It may be quite a while before we know.

Now look at the states listed above. 21 states affected by spinach grown not only in one state but in one region of one state. Had the spinach stayed near home odds are good this would have been caught sooner. But packaging and trucking just gave the 0157:H7 time to grow. (For some reason I’m reminded of Charlie Sheen in Apocalypse Now talking about “…every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger…”.) What’s my point? Had the big chain grocers and restaurant suppliers purchased locally grown produce, this wouldn’t have happened. But don’t blame them. Nope. Blame us. By demanding fresh spinach year round (or anything else for that matter) we create the monster. It’s like Dan Akroyd thinking of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghost Busters. Our own unnatural desires and our refusal to consume locally grown foods have brought us to this sorry state.

And to make matters worse, our ever-wise government has told us to eat no fresh spinach at all. They could have advised us to eat only locally grown spinach but Noooooooo. Let’s shoot every poor farmer in America that’s doing his or her job in the foot. And why? Because we can’t sort out what went there when and how and what it might have touched or been near. Here’s the news kids: when the system gets this big and out of whack, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men (and the USDA and the CDC, and the FDA) cannot keep us safe. I want you to think about that a minute. It’s not their fault. it simply cannot be done. It should not be done.

Right now everyone is doing what they have to do and by the looks of it they’re doing it right. I’m hoping that ground zero for this outbreak will be discovered and that something will be learned. But I still hold that until we diversify and decentralize our food growing system and learn to eat locally and seasonally, we only open up ourselves for more of the same.

And let that be a lesson to us all.

Allah forbid that producers find ways to sell products to people who want them, when they want them, at a price they are willing to pay. Surely our societies ability to distribute goods so that anyone who is willing to trade for them can have will be our downfall.

I'd like to compare the risk factor of being injected with E. coli from this spinach and see where it ranks in the big picture.

*takes a trip to Honduras to gorge in bananas*

I will give you this, however--you could make an argument that eating local is better for the enviroment than eating organic--especially if you rank global warming higher on your totem pole of enviromental concerns.

Native Americans tried eating local. Depending where they lived they could go through some harsh winters with high mortality rates. Persepective tells me that one death every 100 years or so seems like a good trade-off.

Experience tells me washing all my vegetables first is a good idea.

And since you pulled out the global warming gambit I'd like to see scientific proof that not buying local is bad for the environment. First, there is not the local farmland to support any major city in North America. Second, in trying to support the growth of a wide variety of fruit and vegetables required to properly supplement a your diet the use of more pesticides would be required, the yield per acre would be lower. More water would be used in irrigation. Show me the scientific data, then I'll hop on this bandwagon.

Native Americans tried eating local. Depending where they lived they could go through some harsh winters with high mortality rates. Persepective tells me that one death every 100 years or so seems like a good trade-off.

Sometimes people don't need everything that they want. Sometimes they want things that are bad for them. Sometimes nature punishes people for taking too many things that they want, but don't need.

These are not just the lessons of infected veggies. They're the lessons of a fatty who's trying to lose 100lbs.

And to make matters worse, our ever-wise government has told us to eat no fresh spinach at all. They could have advised us to eat only locally grown spinach but Noooooooo. Let’s shoot every poor farmer in America that’s doing his or her job in the foot. And why? Because we can’t sort out what went there when and how and what it might have touched or been near. Here’s the news kids: when the system gets this big and out of whack, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men (and the USDA and the CDC, and the FDA) cannot keep us safe. I want you to think about that a minute. It’s not their fault. it simply cannot be done. It should not be done.

I'd like to compare the risk factor of being injected with E. coli from this spinach and see where it ranks in the big picture.

Certainly, I wouldn't endorse eliminating all non-local food sources. It's just that eating local is the exception to the rule. We get all our groceries from South America or one condensed region of the US. If we go to the farmer's market, it's the rare exception.

It should be the other way around. We should eat what's local and seasonal, with the occasional Honduras banana or California avocado as a treat, and use our supply lines to alleviate localized harsh winters and droughts.

It's like the trans-fat thread. You can't ban most things entirely, but part of having free choices is using responsibility in making those choices.

government mandated

That's going to depend largely on the demographic you're injecting. For the young, elderly, and immune suppressed, it's quite a big deal.

Sure, but even then, I'd like to see the risk factor compared to, say, riding in a car. All too often the media hypes up scare stories to threats that are relatively minute.

Sometimes people don't need everything that they want. Sometimes they want things that are bad for them. Sometimes nature punishes people for taking too many things that they want, but don't need.

These are not just the lessons of infected veggies. They're the lessons of a fatty who's trying to lose 100lbs.

Willie Nelson's public statement regarding being caught with a bag of
Marijuana:


"It's a good thing I had a bag of Marijuana instead of a bag of
spinach. I'd be dead by now."