… there is absolutely no mention of two alternative solutions to buying tomatoes supplied from the contaminated corporate food chain: growing your own, and buying local. How odd. Or not:
The tomato scare may be over, but it has taken a toll — it’s cost the industry an estimated $100 million and left millions of people with a new wariness about the safety of everyday [that is, corporate] foods.
An Associated Press-Ipsos poll finds that nearly half of consumers have changed their eating and buying habits [but never growing habits] in the past six months because they’re afraid they could get sick by eating contaminated food.
They also overwhelmingly support setting up a better system to trace produce in an outbreak back to the source, the poll found.
The people who feel that way include the growers.
Now shut the fuck up and buy more square-shaped, cardboard-tasting tomatoes produced by a system so brutal to its workers and so uncaring for its consumers that it “produces” the following scenario, as the night the day:
0. Picker takes a crap in the field rather than lose a few pennies at the end of the day because they stopped working;
1. Crap gets into the food chain, bringing with it salmonella, and salmonella poisoning;
2. Some people get sick, and others die;
3. And a new wrinkle: Regulators are so hollowed out by the Republicans that they can’t trace down where the crap came from;
4. Growers lose millions, though, of course, only the relatively small ones are really hurt (reinforcing the oligopolies at the top of the food chain. Doesn’t everything?)
5. It’s all just a cost of doing business, and the people who really think that way go to bed each night, and sleep the sleep of the righteous.
Now, I know that growing your own tomatoes and buying local doesn’t help the poor picker who takes a crap in the fields at step 0. But then, neither is the food chain, I would say.
NOTE I like the minimization and trivialization of “tomato scare.” As if food poisoning weren’t legitimately scary. And people know that corporate food comes from anywhere and goes everywhere, so it’s entirely rational not to trust any of it, when some of it goes bad.
Front page
An alternate Step 0
I had the same idea about how the pathogen gets into the food.
It makes sense, but it allows agribusiness, and their apologists in the media, an out. “Those filthy Mexicans! What can you do?!”.
According to this story in New Scientist, it comes from animal (not human?) faeces.
I’ve read reports that chicken/animal manure is sprayed directly on vegetables (sorry no link), and wondered if that could be the source.
I’ll make another plug for our rooftop growing project. If you live in the city and don’t have any land, it’s a great way to avoid bad tomatoes.
Food is Dangerous! Bananas versus tomatoes!
“I guarantee in that time frame, more than 1,000 people were injured slipping on a banana peel,” said Madonia (tomato sales manager.)
I’m not sure what he meant to say here—is this a bananas versus tomatoes comparison?
(meant to point out that all food is dangerous, downplay the risk from one bad, spreading thing and suggest that we should all ignore what’s happening and still do the dangerous thing. Can we make this a general phrase? It would seem useful in politics. Tomatoes can make you throw up but you can fall down on bananas=Be quiet, don’t ask for good values and policies, send Obama money, and vote for him in the fall. Er, the banana fall?)
I was glad they mentioned that one person saying they felt safer buying local.
This is a pretty good update. It’s always worth looking at the ag people for the facts on food—they know what’s going on. I guess what’s causing the illness is a pretty rare form, which should, eventually, help track it. It may very well be from people in the field, as you say, and those poor farming management practices are important to stop—but it could be from a fertilizer, too.
The update is actually out of date
FDA has lifted the tomato warning because fewer people are getting sick. WaPo 7/18:
http://tinyurl.com/6cmotd
They’re now focusing on jalapeno and serrano peppers and say to stay away from those.
You might cross-post on rooftop gardens
and while you’re at it, about permaculture.
It would be nice to have a cheap walk-in greenhouse in the winter. Possible?
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Further proving Lambert's point
“Last week, they recommended that the elderly, infants and people with compromised immune systems avoid eating jalapeños as well as serrano peppers.”
Period. No caveats.
Well, hell, it just so happens I’m growing jalapeños and serranos in my organic garden. Guess I need to landfill ’em. Should I burn’em first, y’ think?
Cheap Greenhouses
Are you familiar with Hoophouse?
I heard about them on a thread at Pat Meadow’s Yahoo Edible Container Gardening group.
I’ve never used them, but they look good.
We’d be happy to cross-post some of our stuff. Maybe in a few days.
Cheap compared to ????
I just clicked on their prices.
What's that out in the garden??
It’s those little crawling babies again!! I can NEVER keep the babies out of my jalapeños patch! Like cats to catnip!!
Cheap greenhouse, lambert?
cheapest one is probably a yugo out of the junkyard.
Seriously. A defunct car, with the interior removed — don’t get one that had electric windows when it was alive; and try to get one old enough to have actual “vent” windows! — is the cheapest greenhouse around.
You can put shelving/benches inside, it’s lockable, the windows adjust for ventilation.
What more could you ask?
There are, probably, a few clunkers for sale in your local paper suitable for creating a portable greenhouse. Or you could see what Ebay offers in your ’hood, or craigslist.
What you want is the part between the firewall and the back bumper; if the motor and transmission are already gone, but the rims are still on, bonus: it’s portable, lightweight, and doesn’t come with a bunch of crap you’ll have to get rid of.
Again, you’ll want to yank the seats out and leave ’em in the junkyard. But make sure all the glass is in place (it should lack bullet holes or missing fragments) and the latches work.
If the neighborhood land use codes forbid you to keep such a beast in your backyard where anyone can be offended by the sight of it, put up a ’privacy panel’ fence around it — give yourself, and it, 5’ or so all the way around (you don’t want the doors to swing into the fence).