Among other striking features, Ettlinger noticed a network of steel pipes that brought sanitizing products in and out of the operation to keep things clean, that the floors were spotless, and that there was no smell in the plant. Of course, what the science writer observed is typical of all large-scale and state-of-the-art food manufacturing operations, which have extremely detailed and complex food safety management systems that analyze and control biological, chemical, and physical hazards from raw material production, procurement and handling, to manufacturing, distribution, and consumption of the finished product.40 Large-scale operations obviously have much self-interest in preventing foodborne illness outbreaks, if only because of the attendant litigation and decline in sales.
One must keep these basic facts in mind when assessing the locavores’ claim on behalf of a highly decentralized system made up of innumerable small farms and processing operations, for, as the agricultural economist Dennis Avery observes, “[s]almonella bacteria are pretty much everywhere, and always have been,” from lettuce, spinach, peanut butter, and unpasteurized juices to ground beef, live chicken, and eggs. The USDA has never tested a cattle herd for E. coli O157:H7 without finding it, while the spinach E. coli outbreak of the same type of a few years ago that killed three people was traced back to nearby cattle and the wild pigs running around both the cattle and the spinach field. Interestingly, the spinach field was in transition towards organic production, meaning that chemical fertilizers could not be used. In addition, the manure on the field might not have been composted at a high enough temperature to kill the dangerous type of E. coli that has also been found in wild pigs, mice, coyotes, cowbirds, and crows.41
The main problem with the locavore’s prescription for food safety is that the threat of food contamination by natural pathogens is much more serious in small than massive food production and processing operations because smaller operations can never possibly assemble the same quality of equipment and food safety know-how as much larger firms. True, large operations are not perfect and from time to time the media has a field day reporting on large food recalls and problematic processing plants. In truth, however, the perception that food is becoming less safe is probably driven by increased reporting of smaller outbreaks that were detected through recent technological advances. In other words, the greater media coverage is not driven by more significant problems, but because they can now be more easily detected and acted upon.42 Although a locavore’s system would ultimately make more people sick and kill more of them, the symptoms they would exhibit, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and fever, would often be difficult to trace to a specific food item as people eat many different things and, additionally, just as many problems can be traced back to the way food is handled at home. In a locavore’s world, only the very worst outbreaks would be publicized.
Sadly, this chapter was being completed as the culprit of the deadliest outbreak of foodborne illness (25 deaths and counting) in a quarter of a century in the United States had just been identified. Not surprisingly, the guilty party in a multi-state outbreak of listeriosis turned out to be not a large agri-business plant with top-of-the-line food safety technologies, but a “pesticide free” and “four generation strong,” family-operated cantaloupe farm located in Southeast Colorado, Jensen Farms, that not only marketed some of its output at local farmers’ markets, but also had benefited from the “buy local” campaigns of large retailers in its area, such as King Soopers, Safeway, Wal-Mart, and Sam’s Club.43 According to FDA inspectors,44 a number of factors had most likely contributed to the introduction, spread, and growth of Listeria monocytogenes in the cantaloupes, namely:Introduction: • There could have been low-level sporadic Listeria monocytogenes in the field where the cantaloupe were grown, which could have been introduced into the packing facility.
• A truck used to haul culled cantaloupe to a cattle operation was parked adjacent to the packing facility and could have introduced contamination into the facility.
Spread: • The packing facility’s design allowed water to pool on the floor near equipment and employee walkways.
• The packing facility floor was constructed in a manner that made it difficult to clean.
• The packing equipment was not easily cleaned and sanitized; washing and drying equipment used for cantaloupe packing was previously used for postharvest handling of another raw agricultural commodity.
Growth: • There was no pre-cooling step to remove field heat from the cantaloupes before cold storage. As the cantaloupes cooled there may have been condensation that promoted the growth of Listeria monocytogenes.
Interestingly, according to food industry blogger Jim Prevor (otherwise known as the “Perishable Pundit”), Colorado is an especially unsafe location to grow cantaloupes because their rough skin makes them particularly susceptible to contamination as bacteria can hide out in their crevices. Because rains splatter mud on them, Colorado melons have to be washed post-harvest, a process that can result in cross-contamination among melons and create ideal conditions for bacteria to thrive. By contrast, the dry summers of Arizona and California are much safer for this fruit because they are watered by drip irrigation and much less likely to get dirty. Cantaloupes produced in those state can thus bypass the rinsing phase and are packaged dry, sometimes right in the field. What to outsiders might look like corporate attempts to cut corners was to the contrary the result of much research sponsored by the California cantaloupe industry.
Prevor adds that the food safety science in cantaloupes was pretty clear before the listeriosis outbreak: “The safest cantaloupes are what are called high desert cantaloupes. Jensen Farms washed all its cantaloupes. Since the science says don’t get them wet, this washing is not a food safety matter. It is a marketing matter.” He then goes one step further and observes, “whatever the specific cause of this outbreak, the more general cause is the local food movement. More specifically, the willingness of large buyers [such as Wal-Mart] to waive food safety standards so they can buy regionally.” “The priority,” he says, “can be safe or the priority can be local, but it cannot be both.”45 Words to ponder…
Of course, what is true for produce is also valid for livestock. Another late 2011 news item was an egg recall from a relatively small Minnesota organic producer.46 While no system is perfect and some operations can be badly managed, large confined egg-producing operations have a number of inherent food safety advantages over such small cage-free farms, such as protecting laying hens from predators, soil-borne diseases, and extreme temperatures. The health of confined animals can also be monitored closely at low unit costs and various systems, such as screens through which feces fall so that they are not walked on or eaten and conveyor belts that move feed and eggs without being touched by human hands, can benefit from significant economies of scale. Salmonella can contaminate any animal-based food from any kind of farm operation whatever its size, but bigger is typically better in terms of food safety.47
In the retail sector, there can be no doubt that large supermarkets are inherently safer than farmers’ markets which are, in most cases, temporary outdoor events with few facilities and whose vendors have, in general, received only the most basic training in food hygiene. While customers typically raise no concerns over these issues, during our trips to such markets we couldn’t help but notice practices that seemed problematic, including freezer doors left open for significant periods of time and different kinds of raw meat being handled on the same cutting board. Perhaps we would all be better served by heeding the warning of Welsh health experts that “given the restricted facilities at farmers’ markets and the early phase of implementation of hygiene management systems by market traders, it may be precautionary to restrict the sale of farm products at farmers markets to those that are regarded as low-risk.”48
Finally, let us address the claim that local food is inherently safer than similar items purchased in countries with less stringent health and environmental regulations. Again, what matters is
how the food is produced, processed, shipped, and conserved, not where it is grown. While there are no ultimate guarantees anywhere, large-scale producers in foreign countries are visited by various purchasers and inspectors while food shipped to a country like the United States is regularly inspected at large transit points. Exporters also have greater economic incentives for shipping good products because having these items rejected would cost them more than if they sold them in their home market due to the additional shipping costs. Export operations established by producers from advanced economies in poorer parts of the world typically implement state-of-the-art technologies which are then implemented in the domestic market. Paradoxically, food produced by small operators and sold at local farmers’ markets in advanced economies rarely if ever undergoes the same level of scrutiny.
Of course, distrust of foreigners is something local producers have long tapped into by invoking—often dubiously—that their production methods are inherently safer. For instance, between 1880 and 1891, Germany declared a “Pork War” on the United States. The implicit message was that America should “reform its slaughterhouses and packaging methods and, most important, that it introduce a reliable system of microscopic examination for exported pork” in order to prevent the spread of trichinae—parasitic nematodes or roundworms, the reason for the widespread advice to cook pork thoroughly. (Again, this trade conflict began nearly three decades before Upton Sinclair published The Jungle.) As was widely known at the time, though, trichinosis was also a significant problem in Germany, as it had claimed at least 513 lives before 1880.49 Slightly more than four decades later, American exports of apples to the United Kingdom were blocked after arsenic-based pesticides had been discovered on some fruit. This ban on imports—pursued, of course, with only the best interest of consumers in mind—was fortuitous as the local apple industry was then struggling. As one commentator had observed in 1925:It is unfortunate that, just when the majority of growers are ready to sell their bulkiest crops and best varieties the market should be filled with imported fruit. [Non-British] Imports begin earlier every year; and the period during which we have our own markets more or less to ourselves becomes correspondingly shorter… Very large quantities of apples are now coming from the United States, Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia, and low prices are the general rule… The very large supplies of imported apples have naturally affected the value of home-grown, and further have made sales very difficult to effect. This state of affairs is very discouraging to home-growers in a season when apples are, in most cases, the only satisfactory crop.50
With the development of the global food supply chain, consumers were given access to a more diverse and affordable diet that contained more fresh produce and animal products than was the case before. In localities where fresh produce was competitive, consumers benefited from excellent products (because of their freshness) for a few weeks each year and from very good ones (because they were shipped some distance) for the remainder of the 52 weeks. The safety of the food they consumed also drastically improved over time, as the wealth creation that resulted from long-distance trade and urbanization paved the way for scientific advances that drastically curtailed the incidence of pathogens that had long plagued humanity.
Were we to turn our back on these advances, we would not progress towards a new system built around heirloom produce varieties and increased freshness, but rather regress towards the grain and potato-based diet that our ancestors eventually escaped from, for the priority of local food eaters, as it was back then, would have to be caloric intake over quality, diversity, and taste. As if this is not bad enough, the locavore’s world food supply would not only be more monotonous and less nutritious, it would be inherently less safe as small producers would never be able to devise food safety protocols that require significant economies of scale to be cost- and capital-effective.
Many consumers might believe that agri-businesses only care about their profits and ignore consumers’ nutrition and health, but the facts tell another story. Humans who benefit from the global food supply chain are now taller, healthier, and live longer than ever before. In the United States, deaths from foodborne illness have proportionally dropped by perhaps as much as 100-fold since 1900.51 Besides, as the food policy analyst Robert Paarlberg observes, approximately 700,000 people die every year from food- and water-borne diseases in Africa where “many foods are still purchased in open-air markets (often uninspected, unpackaged, unlabeled, unrefrigerated, unpasteurized, and unwashed),” versus only a few thousand in the United States.52 Our modern food system is not perfect, but it is a significant improvement over the past practices that locavorism would bring back with a vengeance.
7
Well-Meaning Coercion, Unintended Consequences, and Bad Outcomes
Of all things, an indiscreet tampering with the trade of provisions is the most dangerous, and it is always worst in the time when men are most disposed to it: that is, in the time of scarcity. Because there is nothing on which the passions of men are so violent, and their judgment so weak, and on which there exists such a multitude of ill-founded popular prejudices.
—EDMUND BURKE. 1795. Thoughts and Details on Scarcity
In Edmund Burke. 1800. The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke,
vol. 4, John West and O.C. Greenleaf, p. 235,
http://books.google.ca/ebooks?id=TaNCAAAAYAAJ
In the name of greater food security and economic benefits, countless political rulers have historically sought to increase local food production while keeping foreign imports at bay. Because people only bothered to import foodstuffs from great distances if they provided cheaper and better alternatives, however, protectionist policies have always and everywhere resulted in a higher price tag. Not surprisingly, the available evidence strongly suggests that in most places and most of the time, “food patriotism” needed to be forced down consumers’ throat with coercive measures. Although they might have said something different in public, given a choice, most people apparently always found the notion of paying more for lesser quality food rather unpalatable.1
Things have not changed all that much today. Sure, many consumers will interrupt their dinner to sing the praise of local food to pollsters. When a (typically much) higher price tag stares them in the face though, they sing a different tune.2 Like previous food protectionists, today’s locavores and food sovereignists have therefore increasingly come to embrace old-fashioned coercive policies which they have similarly sugar-coated in alleged broader benefits. Sure, they tell us, forcing schools, prisons, university and military bases to spend more on local food might seem costly to taxpayers, but think of all the jobs created! Yes, preventing farmers from selling their land to build subdivisions might make housing a tiny bit more expensive, but isn’t that a small price to pay for increased food security? As we have already argued, these claims can’t withstand scrutiny. In the remainder of this section, we will briefly explain why other long-standing coercive policies that have been co-opted by an increasingly large numbers of food activists are similarly misguided.3 Trade barriers, production subsidies, supply-restriction schemes, government-run food reserves, prohibitions on food exports and price controls on agricultural products, we will argue, not only make everybody poorer and more food insecure, but also entail a significant environmental cost. First though, let us begin with a brief discussion of how ancient and pervasive such measures really are.
A Brief Historical Overview of Government Intervention in Food Markets
Political rulers have long intervened in food production and markets. Among the oldest measures are the building of infrastructure for transportation (such as ports, roads, and canals) and agricultural production (such as water reservoirs and dikes), as well as the creation of government-run grain reserves, which have been in existence at least since Pharaonic Egypt and Han China (around 200 BC). In Babylon about 4000 years ago, the Code of Hammurabi specified the exact annual wage for a field laborer, a herdsman, and a shepherd, al
ong with the annual rental fee for a draught ox and the price of a milk-cow. In ancient China, the Official System of Chou prevented food merchants from raising their prices above government-decreed levels during calamities and famines, while a whole class of bureaucrats surveyed fields and determined the amount of grain to be collected or issued in accordance with the condition of the crop. Several restrictions on the trade and profits in grain are found in the Arthashastra, an Indian treatise on statecraft published perhaps as early as the 4th century B.C. In ancient Athens, inspectors set the price of grain at a level the government determined to be just; the exportation of local grain was prohibited at any time and punishable by death; officially sanctioned grain buyers were authorized to raise public subscriptions and use private money to secure foreign supplies; and commanders of Athenian ships leaving a foreign port were compelled to carry grain as ballast and to leave two-thirds of their grain cargo in Athens (the rest could be sold or re-exported at their discretion). 4
Punctual or stopgap food policy measures are still very much with us today. For instance, in the aftermath of the price spikes of 2008, the governments of 35 countries released grains from public stocks and subsidized sales of food. The government of Malawi announced that all maize sales would be conducted through its Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC) that would fix the price at which maize was bought from farmers and sold to consumers. The governments of Thailand, Pakistan, and India enacted measures against speculation and harsh penalties against grain hoarders while the Filipino government went as far as enacting life sentences for “plunder” and “economic sabotage.” The Indonesian government implemented trade restrictions and regulations, such as “export bans, use of public stocks, price control, and anti-speculation measures” on rice and palm oil. China imposed export taxes on grains and grain products. Russia raised export taxes on wheat and Argentina on wheat, corn, and soybeans. India banned exports of rice other than basmati.5
The Locavore's Dilemma Page 19