A lot of press releases cross my desk in a week and they cover a lot of ground, topically speaking. Since the beginning of September, an inordinate amount of them have been on the subject of food. Apparently fall is the season to talk about what we eat: what our kids take to school, how to preserve extra produce for the cold of winter, what should be done to get the garden ready for next spring.
Two releases in particular that caught my eye: one about Canada’s Food Inspection Agency, another referring to “food security.”
What are at the core of the ideas of “food safety” and “food security?” If you have ever worked with food in a restaurant or professional kitchen, you know that having your Foodsafe certification is often a requirement. You probably know that the course is based on common sense (wash your hands between going to the toilet and handling food), and you also probably know that some people leave the rules behind during the rush of lunch or dinner.
But what is food safety? According to the CFIA, food safety allows the ‘consumer’ – that’s you and me, by the way – to buy and consume food, confident that what we’re getting won’t make us get sick or die.
The CFIA works via legislation and inspection, but sometimes their process doesn’t work. Take the listeriosis outbreak at Maple Leaf Foods in 2008. More than 20 people died from eating processed meat. In contrast, four people reportedly died from eating poisonous mushrooms in 2009.
Food safety clearly holds within it the idea that having a fear of food might be a good idea. And so it can be, but what makes one kind of food seem safer than another? And what is the cost of having the so-called safety of federal inspection?
Behind both cases of food poisonings is the lack of vital knowledge. Knowing what mushrooms are safe to eat will save you a stomach ache or worse; knowing that the lunch-meats you’re about to buy aren’t teeming with bad-for-you micro-organisms will do the same. Both methods rely on some kind of trustworthy authority, but only enables you to make that decision yourself.
There is no way in the world I would head out to the forest and start eating mushrooms willy-nilly, then wait to see what effect they had on me. I would hardly even trust a book. I want a live fungus-guru to confidently show me the way to the mushrooms she or he has eaten before and say, Yep, these ones are good; here’s how you harvest them.” Even then, I’ll eat only a little bit and see how my body and the fungus get along. Every body’s different, after all. By going with my fun fungus guide, I’m learning how to determine what is safe and what is not. With enough practise, I’ll be my own guide.
In contrast, I’ll never have the technical know-how or access to a CFIA lab that I would need to determine if the salami I’m going to buy is “safe.” With remotely processed food, I am forced to rely on the inspector, and the integrity of the producer – one of the drawbacks of being so remote from the food source.
One of the costs of having a food guardian angel like the CFIA is that their protective legislation reaches out and touches rural and remote farmers, making it an offence to traffic in things like fresh, unpasteurized milk. Even if the farmers have their Foodsafe certification.
Standards, what the CFIA provides, are good to have, but integrity is better. Anyone who takes pride in what they do, including farmers and chefs, want people to enjoy what they can do. While standards hold people to a minimum of acceptability, pride keeps people striving for the best possibility. I would rather drink raw milk from a farmer who loves what she does and wants to share it, than eat inspected sausages made in a factory that I’ll likely never see myself.
Food safety is intimately related to food security too. Food security, according to the World Health Organization, exists “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.” Notice that word safe in there?
That is one nice thing about growing your own food and getting to know your farmers. You’re managing your own supply of the stuff, taking the plant and animal matter into your own hands.
Most food we buy makes an incredible journey to get from where it was grown to our plates. The longer the journey along highways and through factories, the longer the supply chain and the more links in the chain. How lucky we are to benefit from this complex system.
And, to the minds of the food security conscious, how vulnerable as well. If one weak link breaks thanks to a trucking strike, a fuel shortage, or a blight, and that food is suddenly the missing ingredient in our meals. How many missing ingredients before our plates are empty?
When food production is far removed from our daily life, having a federal inspection agency makes sense. It’s hard to build a trusting relationship with a distant food processing plant and to gauge the integrity of the company and its employees. For the most part, I do trust my food source and food safety, often because I feel like I have no choice. It’s difficult and overwhelming trying to find out about everything I eat that comes from away.
For the local stuff, though, I’ve learned to trust my own judgement. And when I do, I find I develop direct relationships with my food and people who grow food, and that’s a lot like community.
