Kitchen Gardeners International: Vegetables and Fruits: the Case for Closeness

The news wires are currently running a story about the rising number of fruits and vegetables contaminated with food-borne illnesses such as salmonella and E.coli.

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), produce triggered 554 outbreaks of food-borne illness between 1990 and 2003, sickening 28,315 people. Of those 554 outbreaks, 111 were due to Salmonella. Although poultry has historically been responsible for far more Salmonella infections, in the most recent years in CSPI’s database, produce seems to be catching up.

The CSPI rightly calls for stricter standards for how food is handled as one way of reducing the risks to consumers. To address the root cause of the problem, however, one must look at the big picture of our food system. Since 1980, the distance that food travels from field to fork is up by 25%. A significant percentage of this increase is due to well-traveled produce. Consumers have come to expect that they can have any foods they want anytime of the year, regardless of the season and the fossil fuels needed to make the global supermarket function.

If we're serious about health, both our own and that of the planet, we'll need to think about how to "relocalize" the global food system. Health officials like to talk about increasing the traceability of foods through high-tech labels. Surely, the easiest way to trace where food comes from is to have it grown and processed as close as possible to where it will be consumed.

Posted by KGI on November 22, 2005 7:33 AM to Kitchen Gardeners International
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