Food Safety

Food Safety

A lot of talk and pontification has been devoted to this subject lately. When the E-Coli thing hit the spinach, Willie Nelson was caught with a bag of pot in his motor home. He got a fine. He said, “If that were spinach, I might be dead.” The real problem comes, not so much, from food production; but from food handling and food processing. The key to safety is to handle it and process it less.

I like to think I am well travelled. I always have to add extra pages to my passport. I am not as well traveled as the food I eat. The food from the garden only goes about 200’; but the stuff we buy comes from everywhere and a lot of people play with it before we eat it. Even on the commercial farm, the food (like the spinach) can get polluted. The spinach was fertilized with cow manure. That should be good. The real problem was that the cows had been eating food supplements containing “meat byproducts”.

Vegetables, even from the garden, should be washed. What goes onto them or into the ground can pollute them; so real food safety comes from being careful what is put on the garden and the plants. There is no joy like picking something, wiping it off on a shirt sleeve and eating it fresh from the garden. I will keep my garden where I am not afraid to do that.

David Segrest is an International REALTOR in Charlotte, NC. His email is david@segrestrealty.com, His webpage is http://www.segrestrealty.com , and his international real estate blog is http://dointernationalrealestate.blogspot.com/.