One Brick Short

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar tells us that We, The People are afraid of our food.

The Associated Press writer, in a story this morning, tells us we’re troubled by tainted tomatoes, burdened by bad beef, and sick with worrying about getting sick from grocery store purchases. We’re even eating less of what we used to eat more.

Hell’s belles, I could have told him that.

I don’t buy tomatoes because they could kill my family with salmonella. They’ve sickened more than 1,200 people in 42 states since April.

I’m careful with spinach because a few years ago E. coli bacteria killed people across the country and made others nasty-sick, including an UVa student. This year has seen the largest ground beef recall in history, raising consumer concerns reflected in the poll. This is particularly important to my family because our eldest suffered E.coli from a fast-food burger back in the past millennium, requiring two weeks in intensive care and dialysis.

Federal officials lifted the tomato warning Thursday, the cause of the outbreak remains unknown. Apparently, they employ happy mediums who are in contact with the Broccoli divas who communicated that the tomato mavens have announced the end of the outbreak. And you wondered why the psychic friends hotline isn’t advertised anymore: They now work for the USDA.

Although three in four of us remain confident about the overall safety of our foods, the poll found that we overwhelmingly support setting up a tracing system for produce. The lack of such a system frustrated disease detectives working on the salmonella outbreak. Some 46 percent of said we are worried we might get sick from eating contaminated food and have avoided foods because of safety warnings. Some 29 percent of us have thrown out food earlier than usual and 14 percent have returned food to the store.

I’ve done both in the past month.

At least one person I know – me – washes prewashed salads. He uses a thermometer to cook meat and buys bison burger from a Madison County farm (available in local groceries) rather than the bulk burger that’s cheaper and more subject to recall.

The poll also found gender, racial and economic gaps on attitudes about food safety. Women, who do most of the shopping, were more concerned than men. For example, 39 percent of men said they were very confident that the food they buy is safe, but only 23 percent of women said they felt that way. The results came from an Associated Press-Ipsos poll, whatever that is. Associated Press polling director Michael Mokrzycki and AP writer Christine Simmons contributed to Alonso-Zaldivar’s report.

In Congress, a leading advocate of food safety reforms said the industry would do well to listen to consumers on the need for tracing, noting that we can “bar-code a banana” and should do so to keep food safe and people buying in stores. Of course the produce industry agrees that federal standards for preventing contamination are necessary. They just don’t want to pay for it. Neither do we, though lord know that we will, one way or another.

That’s OK. Going broke is still preferable to dying.