‘New Food Economy’ explains the problem behind this recall had its beginnings in California.
The recall involves the worldwide McCains Foods, known to be the largest frozen vegetable processor in the world. The local twist is that the young and entrepreneurial McCain brothers got their humble start back in the 1950s in nearby Florenceville, New Brunswick, Canada. The first crop they grew was green beans, potatoes came later.
The REAL problem is we’ve been handed a production-efficiency-mania food system model in which large-scale prospers, creates private wealth and along with it obligatory dominance via self-serving political and economic power.
Of course, the trade-off with enormous concentrated scale is ubiquitous food safety issues and a steady unending procession of food recall events. And keep in mind that’s even before you contemplate the synergistic impacts on your family members of multiple farm chemical toxins which are often found contaminating raw product..
In a great example offered in Michael Pollan’s ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma,’ one leafy greens fresh-pack facility in San Juan Batista CA operates 24/7 and processes 100 million servings of greens a week. As Mr. Pollan points out, it’s as though America has one giant kitchen sink, and if there’s a problem, it’s going to be an enormous one.
Now – not that Industrial Ag has offered us a free and fair choice – compare that mega-scale-potential-for-problems with that of a hard-working local organic family farmer who may have one hundred or one thousand customers. The two scales reflect differences that are magnitudes apart, the human-scale and the corporate-scale. I know what scale I trust. Jim
“What was wrong with all that food? Like the clamshell salads at Whole Foods, they were made with vegetables processed at a single McCain plant in Colton, California. Shortly after the grocers removed their salads, McCain announced a recall of everything it processed there—a variety of sautéed, fire-roasted and caramelized vegetables, including corn, onions, chiles, mushrooms, and peppers—due to a possible Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes contamination that dated all the way back to January 1, 2016.”
https://newfoodeconomy.org/mccain-foods-salmonella-listeria-recall-2018/?fbclid=IwAR1TnXJk4RC6S7TkT9ZHbQTRfh7F09nktaz3hwwZAny6ldNrSlKoKmkGyow
