How Safe is Safe?

I took the food Safe Course a few days ago.. We learned how to watch those all important temperatures and time periods to keep your food safe from pathogens distributed or propagated by people - viruses, fungi, bacteria, protozoa and parasites. The mass food production methods, many handlers and processes our food passes through contribute to the need for us having to cook and clean like never before. I remember the time when we would pull a carrot from the ground and eat it, make a milk shake with raw egg because it was good for you, keep food in a pantry with the window open and cover products with a net. That was good enough. Now I know we have to take the precautions we do, but it is sad isn’t it that our food is so removed from the source and because it passes through so many processes and handlers it may become a danger to us? In my long distant youth we knew the green grocer and likely the farmer down the road who grew the produce. We knew the butcher who knew the farmers who supplied him meat and often we would buy our meat at the farm source.

Most foods are now produced commercially in such enormous quantities, (sometimes thousands of kilometres away) that when one item becomes infected with a pathogen, the likelihood is that many items are contaminated. It is sad that we have no idea what the animals were fed, what type of fertilizer was applied to our veggies and what pesticides were sprayed to keep our fruit perfect or even where our food was grown. Our hamburger meat could be a mixture from several animals, several farms or feedlots. The sign ‘Canada or USA’ gives rather broad options and the product could have been on the road for days. Worse is when the sign says nothing at all about origin. I worry that despite all the precautions about these pathogens we have knowledge of, we don’t give thought to all the other elements such as hormones, surface contaminants, pharmaceuticals or the feed/fertilizer that can affect or make their way into our food. The pathogens we now know about could be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what other parts of our food supply may harm us, or our offspring. I wonder when meat is stamped Government Inspected for example, just what it is inspected for. The information is not easy to find. For me this is another reason to buy locally, to know my food source and the people who produce it whenever possible, to visit the farms, and to be familiar with local food production.