Massive Peanut Butter Product Recall: What Is Wrong With Our Food System?

We are currently in the midst of a salmonella outbreak, which has apparently been linked to peanut butter paste produced at a single processing facility in Georgia. Hundreds of people have been sickened and several have died as result of consuming contaminated products. The list of recalled items continues to grow, and consumers are warned to avoid products that contain peanut butter for now, just to be safe. (For the most up-to-date information on specific recalled products see this list assembled by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.)

This news highlights much of what we read in Michael Pollan's "Farmer In Chief" which was published October 9, 2008 in The New York Times. In this open letter to the President-Elect, Pollan discusses the complex problems resulting from how Americans produce, distribute, and consume their food. Thanks to our current system, the typical American is completely removed from where his or her food comes from and how it actually gets onto the plate. Pollan makes a strong case for decentralizing the current production system, and identifies food safety and security among the many issues that would be improved in the process. "Food eaten closer to where it is grown will be fresher and require less processing, making it more nutritious. Whatever may be lost in efficiency by localizing food production is gained in resilience: regional food systems can better withstand all kinds of shocks. When a single factory is grinding 20 million hamburger patties in a week or washing 25 million servings of salad, a single terrorist armed with a canister of toxins can, at a stroke, poison millions. Such a system is equally susceptible to accidental contamination: the bigger and more global the trade in food, the more vulnerable the system is to catastrophe. The best way to protect our food system against such threats is obvious: decentralize it."

All this really hit home for me last week when I read this article in the Burlington Free Press about a local child who was sickened and hospitalized after eating contaminated peanut butter crackers IN NOVEMBER. How could it possibly take so long for any significant action to be taken? The answer lies in how difficult it is to trace and isolate the source of an outbreak in our massive centralized food system.

So here is some "food for thought" as you consider your own group's community planning: what will the foodways of your community look like? And how might they differ from those embraced by contemporary America?