Salmonella Deaths

One thing I discovered in an attempt to follow up on this Down to Earth post is, the government doesn't seem to do a good job of tracking deaths due to food poisoning. This site has some interesting figures. I'm not quite sure what the difference between roughly 40 deaths per year reported and the 1000 deaths per year estimated tells us about the safety of the system.

I'd throw out this logic, which may be wrong. The stuff that gets reported to CDC is the widespread pattern of illness, which might result from salmonella somewhere in a big mover in the food chain; the stuff that doesn't get reported is salmonella from the smaller movers.

Looked at another way, if there's one thousand deaths in the food system and 40,000 deaths in the transportation system each year, and we eat more often than we drive, food is very, very safe.

Mayor Marion Barry Revisited

Marion Barry hasn't made national headlines in a long while, but he's still in politics as a member of the DC City Council for Ward 8, the hills of Anacostia. He makes the Post regularly, and each time he does I look eagerly to see if they're reporting that he's paid his back taxes yet. (No word so far.)

But, give the guy credit for something other than brass--he does change, according to this post on Marc Fisher's blog. He now welcomes development, marvels at the $450,000 homes, and supports charter schools. That's a far cry from the young organizer with schemes to make money and advance progress by having Pride (his group) put out garbage cans on street corners and then sell ads on them. I voted for that man for mayor, reluctantly and following the lead of the Post. Regretted it ever since. But he's not total con-man, I guess none of us is "total" anything.

Hiding the Lede? Food Advertising for Kids

Both the NY Times and Washington Post carried stories about an FTC study on the amount of money spent on food advertising directed towards children and teens. (Also see the Ethicurean article.) Both reported the figure: $1.6 billion in 2006. Both buried deeply in the story the fact that critics of the food industry had been using the figure of $10 billion (or higher) in their attacks on the industry.

Classifying such advertising has got to be difficult--mostly in the eye of the beholder, I would think. And what costs to include or exclude is also judgmental. (One expert suggested that excluding travel and promotion expenses accounted for some of the difference; that's a lot of first class airline seats.) So there is no true figure.

But still, estimates that vary not by 50 percent but by 500 percent? Give me a break. Perhaps the lede (I love the word and I think it's the first time I've ever used it) should have been more focused on the discrepancy in figures, and what it might imply for consumers of stories--take all estimates with more than your recommended daily allowance of salt.

Crop Volatility

From Farmgate's summary of a study of crop volatility:

Grain market volatility has increased over the past 20 years, no matter how you measure it. Such volatility also seems to be increasing at a greater rate, and that means the structure of agriculture will be impacted, specifically, the management of risk and the cost of commodity trading. Farmers bearing those burdens will eventually see processors and the consumer sharing in that additional cost.

Hot News on Eating from NYTimes

Actually, it's an AP story the Times carried:

"Food Makers Report Profits as Eating in Gains Favor

Kraft Foods, the nation’s largest food and beverage maker, reported growth in the second quarter Monday, as consumers abandoned restaurants for less costly meals at home."

I guess you don't "eat" at restaurants, you "dine".

Irish Agriculture

Here's an interesting article with a splattering of facts about Irish agriculture. It seems that it's heavily subsidized by the EU and mostly dairy and beef. Farmers may rely on the EU for half their income. Irish farmland is expensive, at 60,000 euros. When one converts euros into dollars and finds that's close to $100,000, one is astounded. When one wakes up to the fact that hectare is the unit of land measure, it means that an acre of Irish farmland only costs $40,000 or so.)

The article is keyed to the possible impacts of a big cut in subsidies coming out of the Doha round on trade barriers.

On Aerial Safety and Food Safety

The Times has a review of airline safety today.

I think there's an interesting parallel between aviation safety and food safety.
Like the food industry, there's a broad variety in institutions: we have very big airlines operating very big planes, very small airlines operating very small planes, and individuals flying their own planes. Similarly, we have big companies operating big food processing plants, small companies operating small plants, and individuals processing food in their kitchens.

Now--safety. We know flying is safer than driving and we know flying today is safer than it was 50 years ago. See this. Now Wikipedia doesn't have comparable figures on food safety. However, for any reader of The Jungle it's likely the food safety statistics are similar to those of aviation. The reason: we are humans and humans learn. It may take a few airliner crashes, but we learn how to keep pilots from flying planes into the ground (most of the time). It may take some episodes of food poisoning, but we learn what preservatives to add to the food. Or we learn how to recall

Now, it's a truth not universally understood that big planes are safer than small planes, that American Airlines is safer (on deaths per million miles traveled) than Podunk Airlines, and much safer than Tom Bigshot flying his own Cessna. Might it be true that, on average, food from the large corporate plants is safer than from the smaller plants and even more safe than food from our kitchens? I think so, but without many things I can point to.

However, there is this story, where six members of a family were sickened by ingredients they put in their meal. And Down to Earth has an interesting discussion of safety of ground beef, comparing locally processed meat with that from national plants. I agree with the last sentence, because plants can learn, but we don't do that well.

The End of Food

The Times reviews the book, by Paul Roberts, in today's paper. The reviewer finds it to sound radical, but turn too moderate in recommended solutions. But, having giving the following praise, I'm not convinced of Mr. John Edge's good judgment:

Agribusiness and the industrial food it engenders have, of course, already attracted serious critics. Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” exposed the ills of a lowest-common-denominator diet of burgers and fries. Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” traced among other things the perils of high-fructose corn syrup and grain-fed cattle. Both were works of literary journalism, well-reported and well-written meta-polemics that asked tough questions of both producers and consumers.

Constant readers know that I find Mr. Pollan to be a great writer but a less than great reporter.

I guess I'll have to read Mr. Roberts myself.

If Bureaucracies Secede, Can Countries Be Far Behind?

According to this article, Scotland will soon assume its rightful place among nations, if the answer to the title is "no". (Interesting to note, the Scottish bureaucracy is about the size of my old agency when I was young.)

Illegality of Immigrants

Story in the Times says that the illegal immigrants who worked at the kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa and who were arrested in a recent raid are spilling the beans on their employers--claiming extensive abuses. The bottom line is illegal immigrants aren't in a good position to protest ill treatment.

One of the insights of the Founders, as explained in the Federalist, and as expounded upon by the great Scotch-Irish Canadian, John Kenneth Galbraith, is the need to checks and balances, for countervailing power. That's absent with illegal immigrants.

As a knee-jerk bleeding heart liberal my heart is wrung by stories of the hardships of immigrants. And as someone who sometimes is swayed by the blandishments of free-market economists, I like to believe immigration is good for the nation and doesn't really exaggerate inequalities or hurt low-income workers. So I'm tempted to react--let them all in.

But, there's two lines of argument against an open-door policy which seem weighty: the danger of abuse of illegals, as exemplified in the Times story, and the unfairness to those who wait in line for legal entry.

That's why I'd prefer a policy of universal identification--everyone physically within the U.S. needs to be IDed and legalization by history. Once we have identification, then people who wish to work must agree for their history to be tracked: keep your nose clean and you can move up the ladder to citizenship; screw up and be sent back.