Blame it on the Bacteria – Mega Food Retailers and Their Need to Keep You Out of the Green Market

Ever the since the unfortunate e-coli incident in California, we the eaters of vegetal matter have been victimized not only by bacteria, but also by mixed messages coming from a variety of sources. We left-leaning, organic-eating, populist-acting, free-thinking do-gooders have been hit hard by the lofty rhetoric of the lobbies who want to rid the world of small producers and the whole notion of “organic”.

First Spinach, then Carrots, now…. Scatology?

The reason for the e-coli outbreak is Fertilizer. Fertilizer comes from Manure. Manure comes from the digestive tracks of mammals. Human beings are mammals. Much of our own “bio-solids” ends up in fertilizer. If the fertilizer is not treated properly, the inevitable bacterial outbreak with occur.

The spinach was a lovely breeding ground, and there was no way for the growers to know, except by taking samples.


Two Amazing Facts

First, the amount of spinach exported from California, and specifically from a handful of farms, is astounding. To think that your eggs Florentine were crowned by spinach coming all the way across the continent, when spinach is available RIGHT HERE!

Second, the idea that an “organic” farm can use treated bio-solids of the Homo sapiens variety is, well, disturbing.

Mega Food Retailers Gleeful

The recent trend towards Green products, local production and artisanal foods has vexed the Wal-Marts and indeed the Whole Foods of the world (for different reason, of course). Scrambling to get their share of your Green dollar, giant retailers have begun competing directly with local Farmers Markets. What better way to drive the masses out of the green market and back into the processed and “vale added” food retailers than by scaring the pants off them? (Value-added means that if the grocers pretties-up a veggie, the veggie costs three times more.)

No doubt there were smiles all around as giant companies like ADM (purveyors of so many agricultural chemical additives), thinking that the organic farmers were finally “getting theirs”. But I speculate, based solely on the things said by people in the Agra business.

Our S*** Don’t Stink

While we all ponder the ramifications of our own bio-solids being spread out on the corn crops, it is important to note that we are importing food from all over the world all the time to satisfy our whims. We can get almost anything we want at any time of the year. Aside from the monumental distances that these foods must travel, there is a need to fertilize the little baby plants, and there is nothing quite like s***, even our own, or that from somewhere far, far away.

Who to Blame?

It’s fairly clear that if you are a big retailing giant and if you want to continue to grow your business until it is so large it collapses onto itself, you need NEW customers every day. Where do you get them from? You get them from your competitors. What better tool is there than FEAR.

But Americans, once frightened, like to know who to BLAME, so that swift action may taken. The scuttlebutt was that somehow these organic spinach farmers were “dirty”; there has been no talk of the vendors that sold them the “bio-solids”, which are the source of the e-coli.

We can blame the bacteria, the farm workers, the farmers, the croppers, the machinery… but it in the end, it is the quality of the s*** that matters.

Tags:   bio solids, e coli, farmers markets, fertilizer, green markets, shit, spinach, Wal Mart, whims

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Posted on 10/19/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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