We can only imagine that the recent outbreak of disease from E. coli-contaminated spinach has been an eye-opening and stomach-turning matter for our vegan friends. It turns out that sticking to vegetables and produce doesn't keep anyone from eating animals - just animals we can see. What we consider food is, in fact, habitat for many organisms, including bacteria.
The spinach scare has led, inevitably, to a fresh round of public outcry about ensuring food safety. This is an understandable reaction, but one that displays a decided lack of perspective and also a somewhat skewed view of food itself.
What's almost mind-boggling, though, is the fact that such incidents are rare enough to make this a big, national news event. Three hundred million Americans consume millions of tons of food daily - food obtained from an astounding array of sources, foreign and domestic - with only minimal need to wonder about its safety. Indeed, 99.999939 percent of Americans were not sickened by their spinach this past month. That's not perfection, but trending very close to it.
This isn't to say food-borne illnesses aren't worthy of significant concern. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate there are some 76 million cases of food-borne illnesses in America each year. E. coli is perhaps the third-most common cause of food-related illness. More common are campylobacter and salmonella. Most of the illnesses prove minor and often aren't even recognized by the sufferers as being caused by food. People often are right when they say they caught “a bug,” even if they aren't aware that bug was in their salad or in their sandwich. More than 300,000 people are hospitalized and about 5,000 die each year from illnesses originating with food. Again, do the math: with 300 million people eating three meals a day each plus countless snacks, 365 days a year and, the incidence of serious illness originating from food is incredibly low.
Could it be lower? Yes. There are all sorts of measures that provably reduce the risk of food-borne disease. Some of those measures involve the way crops and animals are raised, harvested and prepared for market. Some of them have to do with how they're handled in stores and in your home. Many of them have to do with your own personal hygiene. We know that food-borne diseases can be reduced because we've done it. When was the last time you heard of someone in this country catching cholera, typhoid fever or tuberculosis from the food they ate? It once was relatively common. When it comes to making food safer, a little sanitation, proper storage and cooking and a lot of hand-washing go a long ways toward keeping everyone healthy.
But the risks can't ever be eliminated. That's because what we call food are living things. They're plants or animals or - to consider the full biotic spectrum - most often plants and animals. We can make it and keep it clean and perhaps cleaner, but we can't actually sterilize it for long. The food we eat is food or habitat for other creatures, and some of them are dangerous to us. Chemicals can help reduce unwanted life forms on our plate, but chemicals used in growing, protecting and processing food can present their own health risks.
Our best bet is to understand the inherent, albeit small, risk associated with eating. If you appreciate the risks, you're more likely to take the precautions that will keep those risks as low as possible.
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