Acres Of Green + Movable Type Blog

  Nearly everyone is concerned about something, the stock market is in the tank, several banks and institutions are in trouble or taking bankruptcy. The political arena is alive with stuff I don't even want to talk about or repeat. We still have several issues that never seem to come to light.

   A couple days ago I seen a show on how they get food to our super-markets in such a hurry for us consumers to snap-up. They showed huge ships, trucks, vans and large distribution centers. I sat through the entire program wondering if anything ever went wrong. Of course they do.

   Years ago the American farmer raised enough grain and livestock to feed the US and other countries to. Today they can still do the same. Less than 1% of our countries population are farmers, making this industry one of the most efficient in the world. This figure doesn't include the new hobby farms but if you did count them it would still surprise us.

   Yes the day of the local farmer/rancher/butcher are nearing the end, in favor of corporate conglomerations that have little to do with farming and a-lot to do with making money. The show I watched not only showed me how fast and efficient things worked, it also showed me how fast things could get out of hand!

   In the old days if you needed milk, the milkman would bring it, if you wanted a steak or some ground round the local butcher was usually happy to help. Corn and wheat flour was usually done with a commercial company but different rules and attitudes seemed to exist then. Yes times have changed ... but are they better? How can we be sure several of those big containers don't carry something we really don't want? What's to say someone with a grudge won't sabotage the food chain somewhere down the line?

   Some incidents are simply beyond anyones control and we may have isolated incidents at anytime, but are we doing enough to keep our food safe? It would be my guess that we are not. With so much freight moving here and abroad I don't see how this mass of food could ever be kept 100% safe!

   Politicians need to say no to countries that still use pesticides and insecticides that have been baned in this country for decades and a system needs to be in place to trace a food product back to it's origin, and be able to act quickly in-case of incident.

  With all the traveling we and our food does- how do we keep everyone and every container safe?