Factory Farmed Cantaloupe Source of Listeria Outbreak That Has Killed 10

Cantaloupes purchased from supermarkets like Walmart have sickened 55 people and killed 10. A mass production farm has been fingered as the culprit, but the reality is that it’s the method of raising food that’s at fault, not any specific producer. As is symptomatic in our society, the source of harm is not addressed. Instead, the focus is on pointing fingers—as if fingering a guilty party will fix it. It won’t.

Because of the potential for food-borne illness in raw milk, the FDA is doing everything within its power—and well beyond any legitimate power it has—to destroy producers and sellers.  Swat team operations have been used to intimidate an Amish farmer and a raw food cooperative, all for the purpose of ending our right to drink raw milk. Yet, outbreaks of listeria in raw milk have been exceedingly rare, and when they do occur, because of the need to produce raw milk only on a small scale, they are limited and easy to resolve.

On the other hand, an outbreak of listeria that results from factory farming can be exceedingly difficult to control. The products are often spread all over the country, and even the world. Because of the enormous scale of factory farming, the numbers can be enormous. And how do you notify everyone who might be affected?

Nonetheless, the FDA is attempting to demonize and shut down all raw milk production in the country. But raw cantaloupes won’t be banned. Do you remember the peanut butter deaths a couple of years ago? Nine people died and 22,500 were sickened. It took months before that was resolved—primarily because the FDA wasn’t willing to shut the producer down. Peanut butter is still on the shelves.

This year alone, we’ve experienced:

• The recall of 36 million pounds of ground (minced) turkey for salmonella poisoning.
• The recall of 55,000 pounds of Jennie-O turkey burgers for drug-resistant salmonella.
• 3,000 cases of Dole bags of salad recalled for listeria.
• 97 cases of salmonella poisoning from papayas.

And don’t forget the recall of over half a billion eggs last year!

Obviously, this problem needs to be resolved, but not by adding layers of regulations. That can only mask the problem and further erode food quality. The primary cause is Agribusiness. Food production has been taken from a mostly local, hands-on, human-to-human business. It’s been modernized into something that produces things labeled as food that wouldn’t have been recognized as food a few decades ago—primarily because it isn’t. It’s food stuff.

Sadly, the fear of cantaloupes has resulted in people fearing the sources that are safest, local producers. These are the innocent ones, the people who grow real food for local consumption. They are our food refuge. If we want something approaching food safety, then we need to source our food locally as much as possible, and from traditional organic farmers whenever possible.

Tagged agribusiness, cantaloupe, factory farming