Or maybe some bagged spinach? That may be a ludicrous question, but right now it seems like the right thing to ask. Never mind that there is an easy way out of this. Did I say easy? Not if the bureaucrats have their way. Many are too busy with their “Senate Pages” and prostitutes to be able to do something about this problem. Let’s see how simple this could be.
Someone gets sick. “Where did you eat last?” “I had a vegie sandwich at Dell’s Deli”. Go to Dell’s and ask where he bought his tomatoes, then order your turkey breast and swiss on whole wheat, hold the tomatoes. Head over to Joe’s Wholesale Produce and ask which farms he bought from. Then you go to Tex’s Red Star Farms and find out who picked them, and if they are washing their hands after using the outhouse. That’s right, your salmonella may have come from poop hands.
Where did you think it came from? Dead plucked chickens dancing on the produce? Maybe a few raw eggs accidentally cracked on it? By the way, don’t order ceasar salad unless the eggs in the dressing are coddled properly. They usually use raw eggs. So, poop hands, unwashed utensils in preparing food, raw chicken on the cutting board, how simple could all this be?
Instead, they try to find the source first. Which boat did they come in on, where did those go to, how do we find them now? Needle in a haystack. Hey, if you want to find the salmonella, find the tomatoes you know have it. Don’t try it from the other end. Trace it backward. That’s the easy way to do a maze, too. You start from the finish. Come on, let’s be smart about this.
A number of years ago, San Luis Obispo County had problems with Sugar Peas or Snap Peas. Don’t ask me the difference, it was a long time ago, and I stopped eating the peas because of it. It seems the field workers were “doing their business” in the fields, then continuing to pick. At least THAT’s what I remember. I just remember that after that, the county made a requirement to have porta potties when picking produce. That is why you see them now, when you see field workers doing their thing. What about washing their hands? Is that a requirement?
You say that’s too simple? Haven’t you watched those TV news magazine shows like 20/20 and the others when they’ve done demonstrations on spreading bacteria? No, you just watch the ones where they trap the pervs after young girls. Anyway, they spray some harmless bacteria that are blacklight reactive in a couple places, and see how far it goes. Pretty soon it is all over the place. On and in the fridge, the kids, the food, everywhere. Don’t scratch yourself there! The people get disgusted, and you forget about it. That shows how easy it happens.
How is this stuff getting into the marketplace? Maybe inspectors are overworked. Maybe unions just want to get the government to hire more inspectors, and they can get more union dues. Maybe some inspectors just don’t care. Maybe they don’t like their jobs. Maybe they are incompetent. It can’t be THAT many inspectors, can it? Besides, what do you look for?
Is there a magical way to tell if a tomato has salmonella? Does it look a little green behind the gills? Does it look nauseous? How does an inspector tell there is something wrong with the produce? Is there a little vial test like the cops use to tell if someone is carrying meth with them? Let’s spray the tomatoes with some magical fluid and check it with a blacklight like on CSI.
I know it is already bad enough that they have to approve a whole cargo container of produce to come into this country or the grocery chain based on testing a couple pieces out of one or two boxes, or so I have been led to believe from the last time we had a scare like this. They tell horror stories about loads that come in with minimum of testing. We don’t need horror stories about produce. There is enough out there without it.
Heck, if the average person went into the kitchen of their favorite restaurant and looked under everything, they wouldn’t eat out any more. It is up to the stores, restaurants, sandwich shops, or wherever, to wash these things thoroughly. Do you wash YOUR produce well? Hot water. All it would take is some preparation at the place that is putting the tomatoes on my sandwich. But then again, how many of them aren’t washing their hands after the restroom too?
Darn poop hands.
The Opinionator
