Being a "chicken little" doesn't solve anything.

In response to the article concerning our food chain: If you think that by throwing half-truths around and using scare tactics you are helping our cause, you're not. This kind of activity on either side of the issue only makes things worse and clouds the real issues. By tossing this kind of misinformation around the other side thinks that the "gloves are off' and that everything and anything is fair game. If we could only stick to the facts, then I believe that we could get to the heart of the problem a lot faster and be able to come up with a food system that would be better for all of us. The big problem is that there are plenty of lawyers, bureaucrats, activitists, and other "concerned citizens" that think the end justifies the means. They want to control you and your behavior by scaring you into believing that they are your salvation and that by supporting them, usually with your money, you will be safer.

There is some good information in the article, but the amount of "dubious" information and hysteria seems to outweigh the good stuff by a great deal. Take the milk industry for example. "Cattle owners rarely inspect udders for mastitis or other diseases" may be a true statement, but it is certainly misleading. I, personally, would rather have the people doing the milking inspect the udders. "The milk is moved via suction hoses into a holding tank, that may or not be thoroughly cleaned ..." as John Stossell would say, "Give me a break!".... you might get hit by an asteroid, too. These producers can't afford not to properly clean their equipment because if anyone gets sick, Mr. American Consumer will be there the next morning with his lawyer and between the two of them they will divide up everything this milk producer owns. By the way, most of these dairy farmers, at least in this part of the country, are just small family farmers trying to get by.

"What if a terrorist slips something in a tanker truck while the driver sleeps on the side of a lonely highway?" Crop dusting terrorists raining pesticides? When did being a Chicken Little ever solve anything?

Animal carcasses can become contaminated with brain or spinal fluid, but it is certainly not going to be from a stun gun.

It's the old law of supply and demand. If no one is demanding their services, then the demand for inspections should go away. You can't complain about the streamlining of the inspection service and the lack of inspection controls on one hand and complain about how you want less inspection on the other. I haven't heard of any consumers demanding less inspection. Quite the contrary, whether it be some news service, consumer activist group or a government agency, the American consumer has been whipped into such a hysterical state that they are demanding more and more inspection every time you turn around. The American consumer has been scared into believing that more inspection is the only way they are going to be safe.

Inspections are not the way to go

Inspection doesn't work. Not because there are too few inspectors but because you can't inspect quality into a product. And another thing, most of the things that make you sick, you can't see. Are you going to swab every inch of every carcass to determine if there are microbes there that might (and I say, might) make you sick? My own personal opinion is that our food system is too clean and that more of us are getting sick because we no longer have immunity from these bugs because we are not getting small doses of them every day to keep our immune system on guard. Most of us who travel south of the border spend weeks recovering from "gastrointestinal distress" that the natives there have little or no trouble with. Who do most consumers think has a "better" food system? The days when my grandmother went out to the springhouse and trimmed the green off the side of beef hanging there and fed it to the dog or chickens are long gone.

If you think HACCP does not work, then you don't know how it works. It makes more sense to have inspectors reviewing HACCP data than standing on a production line looking for things that they can't see. HACCP makes the workers, who are there everyday and see almost every piece of food that goes by them, part of the quality control team.

The statement is made that there are more food-borne illnesses today than ever. I have a book on the shelf behind my desk called How to Lie with Statistics. I do believe that there are more reported cases of illness from meat than ever, not because there are a larger percentage of people getting sick from tainted meat, but because 1.) Our reporting systems are better today, 2.) There are more people in the world today than when their baseline data was collected, and 3.) We can better identify the causes of illness than we used to. What used to be classified as "stomach flu" can be narrowed down to a few microorganisms that cause an illness.

I believe in "slow foods." I would rather pay my neighbor for his product because I know he is going to spend that money back into our community, which ultimately helps both of us. Also, if there is a problem, I can go talk to him and I don't go there with a lawyer in tow.

I used to work for some of these large food companies. I have a lot more reason to dislike them than most people do. I know what most of them do and don't do and as a whole they don't put out contaminated food. They can't afford to because there are thousands and thousands of people out there that think a food-borne illness is their ticket to instant wealth.

I have been asked to go easier on lawyers and maybe I should. If there weren't people out there trying to get rich quick, the lawyers wouldn't have any business. So I guess maybe there is a certain segment of the consuming public that should bear the brunt of my frustration.

We have the safest and cheapest food system in the world. Is it the healthiest for you? Probably not, but that is what the American consumer has wanted. Scaring them into believing that the sky is falling is not going to help them make better, more informed decisions about who produces the food they eat and where it comes from.

By the way, I am one of those "demonic" County Extension Agents that everyone likes to take pot shots at. I was born and raised on a farm. I left out that I was an Extension Agent until the end in the hopes that you might read this and maybe, just maybe, clearer heads will prevail and we can make some real progress in America towards healthy, self-sustaining food systems that are better for all of us.--Bruce Smith, Washington, DC