Eat This Newsletter 245: Fruity
Hello
Food-borne illness, expensive fruit, and plant-based pet food. The really scary part of the CDC’s Outbreaks pages is just how many of them there are.
Here Come The Bugs. Again
North America is once again being assailed by food-borne illness. In Canada, “plant-based refrigerated beverages” contaminated by Listeria monocytogenes have been recalled, while in the US the current Listeria concern is meat sliced at a deli counter. A third outbreak, caused by Salmonella, including a new strain, on cucumbers is effectively over but raises questions about how to manage food-borne illness.
There’s really not a lot to say about these recalls other than to reiterate the risks posed by large manufacturers with nationwide distribution. In the case of the deli meats, the outbreak has already killed at least two people. There is a suggestion that sliced turkey and liverwurst were responsible for most cases, but the CDC is still trying to pin down specific producers and notes that Listeria “spreads easily among deli equipment, surfaces, hands and food”.
Two brands are involved in the Canadian outbreak, Danone’s Silk and Walmart’s Great Value. Danone said the plant-based milks were produced by a third-party manufacturer and that it had shut down operations there for a full investigation. I couldn’t discover who makes plant-based milk for Walmart; could be the same company.
The contaminated cucumbers didn’t kill anyone, but they made many more people ill. They were traced to Bedner Growers in Florida and in a sense the outbreak is over, as the company has sold all its cucumbers and is no longer shipping them, for now. The case again raises questions about who is responsible for monitoring food safety because the samples of Salmonella included a new strain, Salmonella Braenderup, which was traced to untreated canal water that Bedner used to irrigate its plants.
[T]here must be some kind of enormous CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) nearby, spilling its cattle, dairy, or poutry waste into local streams.
The difficulty, as she points out, is that the Food and Drug Administration regulates cucumbers, while the US Department of Agriculture regulates livestock. Nestle draws attention to a recent paper in the Oklahoma Law Review. I haven’t read it but Nestle extracts a money quote:
This Article develops general principles for addressing known unknowns using a case study of efforts to regulate agricultural water quality. Contaminated water used to cultivate fresh produce is a well-known cause of recurrent foodborne illness outbreaks. Unfortunately, it has, so far, proven impossible to reliably quantify the risk of human illness from any given source of agricultural water.
The paper goes on to analyse in detail the challenges that have frustrated successful regulation of agricultural water quality. As long as two different agencies are involved, Nestle suggests, similar contamination is likely to continue unchecked.
FDA has no authority over CAFOs. Its authority stops at the farm. How is the cucumber farmer supposed to stop toxic forms of Salmonella from getting onto cucumber fields?
Conspicuous Fruit Consumption
Back in February, I was happy to read an article from Tokyo weekender that explained why Japanese fruit is so expensive, noting the inefficiencies of the farms and the ruthless selection for produce that can command the highest prices. Now, from The Japan Times, an article about how luxury fruit is beginning to appeal to consumers in America.1
The article amplifies some of the original points and also talks about how other countries are beginning to grow very expensive fruit for the American market. Del Monte, with its GMO Pinkglow pineapple, is by no means an inefficient mom and pop operation, which may be why price per pineapple has dropped from $50 when it was introduced in 2019 to $29 today. I loved the detail that Pinkglow and its cousin Rubyglow — $396 a pop and all sold out — arrive decapitated, so no-one can use the crown to grow another pineapple. And, in the best tradition of both-sidesism, the article also suggests a few somewhat less expensive fruits and varieties that may be worth paying a bit more for.
Alas, though, it doesn’t directly answer its headline question: “Does a $156 melon taste sweeter?”
You know what I think of that.
Pets Will Not Save the Planet
In The Guardian, I learn that the UK has become the first European country to approve lab-grown meat. The kicker? “starting with pet food”. A company called Meatly produces vat-grown chicken cells that can now be added to pet food. This will enable pet owners to assuage their conscience about feeding their loved ones meat from slaughtered animals.
Meatly’s product is described as “a paté-like paste” that, I dunno, may be more appealing to dogs than to people. And don’t expect to see it on the shelves any time soon. Approval is the first step, and the company still has to make the chicken paste cheap enough to be added to pet food.
The Guardian highlights research saying that the global pet food market is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions “similar to that of the Philippines, the 13th most populous country in the world”. (And, though the paper does not see fit to mention it, responsible for a whopping 0.4% of global GHG emissions.) I looked at the paper and was more impressed that global pet food is responsible for only 1.1–2.9% of emissions for agriculture, 0.8–1.2% of agricultural land use, and 0.2–0.4% of freshwater use in agriculture.
Naturally I was very disappointed to find no mention of pet food in a recent piece in The Conversation pointing to small changes in shopping choices that can make a big difference to sustainability.
Take care
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The delicious part of the article is that it was originally in the New York Times, which has a difficult approach to sharing and has a lot of explaining to do before I will directly link to it. ↩