In the New York Times, Kim Severson and Andrew Martin mar an otherwise decent article with a terrible closing -
Emily Wyckoff, who lives in Buffalo, buys local food and cooks from scratch as much as possible. Although she still buys organic milk and organic peanut butter for her three children, the organic label means less to her these days - especially when it comes to processed food in packages like crackers and cookies.
"I want to care, but you have to draw the line," she said.
But the line stops when it comes to basic food safety.
Recently, a sign near the Peter Pan and Skippy at her local grocery store declared that those brands were safe from peanut contamination. There was no similar sign near her regular organic brand.
"I bought the national brand," she said. "Isn't that funny?"
This reminds me of those activity books I remember from my childhood, the ones where you have to circle the things that are out of place in a scene. So what's wrong with this picture?
First - how could the criminal actions of PCA and the failings of certain organic certifiers even be remotely connected in any way to "buying local and cooking from scratch"? Are the editors at the New York Times on vacation this week, or just asleep?
Also, let's think about the 'signs in the grocery store' part for a bit. Anybody who's been alive and even remotely aware for the past few decades should know by now that supermarkets often give preferential treatment, shelf space, displays and special in-store advertising considerations to the giant food manufacturers. So we're to assume that because food industry conglomerates ConAgra (Peter Pan) and Unilever (Skippy) are favorites of the chain supermarkets, that their products are inherently 'safer' than any other brand not affected by this particular recall, just because signs in supermarkets say so?
Of course in that case, we'd also have to forget the inconvenient fact that ConAgra's Peter Pan is the original salmonella peanut butter company.
"Isn't that funny?"
Update via Jill: US Food Policy weighs in... |
