I am sure if you are alive, eat anything from the grocery store or from a food establishment that prepares it for you, unless you are currently under a rock you have heard about the the suspected tomato salmonella scare. Just in case you have not a brief bit of background. There were a bunch of cases of salmonella, over the weekend I believe. The FDA (though I believe the CDC was involved too) released warnings and recommendations to not consume certain kinds of tomatoes, specifically beef stake and roma or plum types. Since then the tomatoes have disappeared from fast food chains like McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell and others, as well from the shelves at Wal-Mart, Winn-Dixie, Kroger, and so on. Today at some point the recommendation has been determined that it is safe now to eat tomatoes from 19 states of origin but you should still hold off from other states.
Now a little review. Salmonella does not come from salmon the fish. It is a bacteria that is usually transmitted initially through contact with feces. Hence why it is so easy to it happening in the more common culprit – chicken. Tomatoes another story – but perhaps water in irrigation or washing was contaminated. Regardless, if you tomato was not grown in one the 19 approved states or something you grew yourself or from a reputable local farmer you better be safe and throw it out.
Why is this new here? First is that if you grew it yourself – your fine. No need to really worry. You pretty much know if you exposed your tomato crop to human feces or not. Beyond that, you could get them from a reputable local farmer. Now realistically in our climate we are still a few weeks away from the earliest tomatoes in our region – if they didn’t grow them in a greenhouse they still came from a truck out of state.
This how things leads me to a couple of issues I have had for a few years. Our food is so much better when acquired in its proper season. After all, those things they call tomatoes during the winter are hard and tasteless. Further, when we are touch with where our food came from, especially locally, we can feel better about it. Especially if we know the care and concern that a farmer may have put into making it happen instead of some industrial farmer that is about minimizing cost and hence maximizing profits. Of course the flip side of this is, we have to expect that there is some possible losses due to lack large scale process and hence there will be some increase in the price of such food. A small price to pay for knowing reasonably well that your food is bursting with the best of flavor and its peak and most likely the safest of foods you have been exposed too in a long time.
Anyway, this thought then leads to a concept called Slow Food. The basic ideas are that we slow down and enjoy food for what it is. We also slow down and have food in season. And lastly – and this is the big one that I am such a strong advocate of – we move our food a lot less – after all the food less traveled has a lot less chance of exposure to things such as salmonella.
I could go on about how food traveling less would help our current crunch on fossil fuels or how I think that incidents like this (of which we have had more of with vegetables then meats) points to the need to have better identification on fruits and vegetables or how the concept of NAID for animals is really the wrong place to be looking (and for the record – I am vehemently opposed to NAID). But I will instead save those for later upcoming blogs.
Instead, just thinking eating slow moving food that travels small distances and let that be some food for thought. If that is not enough, think about, when tomatoes come into season in a few more weeks no need to worry about salmonella from the local ones – give that some thought instead.
** – Originally published on Mephistos on 10th of June 2008.