Minnesota Farmers Union

(September 3, 2010) - If there is one topic we wish would disappear from our column topic radar, it would be food safety. Every time a food recall is activated, farmers end up with egg on their face—we couldn’t resist the line—even though most had nothing to do with it.

All it takes is a few bad actors to make everyone look bad. There was a time before the widespread availability of refrigeration that rancid butter was a problem. This problem gave an opening for the development of “oleomargarine.” And so to protect their markets and profitability, cooperative creameries began educate and monitor their members so they could consistently provide the public with a quality product. The monitoring was necessary, because rancid cream from a few careless producers would ruin the quality cream delivered by the rest.

While we would be reluctant to classify the industrial-style producers of most of the eggs sold in the US as farmers, there is little doubt that the general public does not make that distinction. Eggs come from chickens and farmers raise chickens; case closed.

(July 31, 2009) - The July 21, 2009 romaine lettuce recall by Tanimura & Antle puts another exclamation point on the issue of food safety. The lettuce was being recalled because of a positive result for Salmonella on a random test conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. As of Sunday, July 26, 2009, the recall had not been posted on the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) "2009 Recalls, Market Withdrawals, & Safety Alerts" website even though Tanimura & Antle posted it on their site on July 21.

When President Obama established the Food Safety Working Group in the White House, he said, "We are a nation built on the strength of individual initiative. But there are certain things that we can't do on our own. There are certain things that only a government can do. And one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat...are safe and don't cause us harm."

(February 11, 2009) - One of the weekly features broadcast by a local Knoxville, TN television station announces the names of the restaurants that achieved the highest scores on recent health department inspections, They also announce the names, scores, and reasons for those scores of the restaurants that were given the lowest scores by the health department. In addition, the law requires that all restaurants post the latest inspection reports in plain view of the eating public.

While our health department and others around the country have a system in place that makes the results of their inspections of restaurants that serve 100s of people available to the public, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no such system in place for firms that serve hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

When the Georgia Agriculture Department, under contract from the FDA, found serious sanitation problems on one of their inspections of the Peanut Corporation of America facility-the one later found to be responsible for the recent Salmonella outbreak-the plant was not shut down and required to correct the deficiencies. In addition, no word went out to the purchasers of the product from that plant.

(January 22, 2009) - One of the recurring discussion topics of this column is food safety. In a recent column, we talked about imported honey. At other times we have talked about melamine in chocolates and wheat gluten, ethylene glycol in toothpaste, and e. coli in beef and field-grown vegetables.

This week we want to look at Salmonella in peanut paste and peanut butter used in commercial settings. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reported a genetic match between the Salmonella found in a batch of peanut butter at an institution in Minnesota and the strain of Salmonella that has caused illnesses in Minnesota and other states.