Life lesson

I was reading Perishable Pundit today and found this great video Jim had posted from The Wall Street Journal. I thought it was very good and appro po, particularly since my oldest son and college grad just got a job in Portland and will be moving out there in a couple of weeks. The concept of the lecture series: If you only had one time to communicate what was important, what would you say? After watching the video, you will see the poignancy of what is said.

A year later: 5 deaths and public opinion

Here is the link to the USA Today article on spinach and last year's victims of the E. coli outbreak. Following are a few comments tailing the the story, and you will find a balance between "sue the he--" out of salad makers and "what's the big deal":


I used to eat package lettuce. I noticed I always had a upset stomach and the runs after eating the package spinach. I decided not to ever purchase package lettuce again. Too risky!If I do buy spinach, I buy either fresh or frozen, but never packaged.

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Something like a hundred people every day die in car crashes. People still drive.No disrespect to the spinach victims here, but a handful die, and "Gosh-Amighty, don't eat spinach anymore!" is the reaction.You can reduce risks, and balance benefits against risks, but you will never eliminate all dangers in your life.And eating more grime, bugs, and germs, and exposing yourself to colds and such, might just exercise your immune system, and help you to better fight off the E. Coli.I believe people have become overly germ-o-phobic. ("Scrub your hands after touching that door knob, little Johnny.")

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Whatz the big deal? Only 5 people out of almost 300 million people in this country died. It's very simple: survival of the fittest. Bacteria isn't a new phenomenon. Just wait until the millions of generation Xers who have never been exposed to the 'outside' get sick later on in life because their soccer moms were afraid of their precious babies getting their hands dirty as babies. Get over it.


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They say if the bag of greens is already tainted with E-coli then washing it is futile. I think with this most recent recall for lettuce, it's time to NOT purchase the produce in a bag. I don't think that this can be fool-proof and protected from this type of contamination no matter how careful they try to be. It's scary to think that the one woman became so very ill and then passed away that her illness could have remained a mystery except for the bag of spinach in the daughters fridge.

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anyone else think that the opening titles for this article are extremely melodramatic? I mean, yes, the five deaths are horrible, but... come on. Lay off the violins. "2006 Spinach Recall: Roots of a Tragedy." Gag. Me.People die horribly everyday, and if the media treated every death this way... well, I don't even want to think about it.



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IF these crazy food processing companies and their CEO's would spend as much cash on safety and proper cleaning of the products in each and every stage of production prior to shipping rather then on advertising they might have something good that they could bank on like their good names. And with that their profit marginsalong with the demand for their product would also increase. Grim Reaper in a bag has no curb or sale appeal



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but, these are made in USA,should not be something like that.These Spinach must be imported from China ??????????



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The most danderous part of spinach is driving to the store to buy it.


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As long as you aren't 5 years old or 80 years old with a weak immune system, you aren't going to die from e coli... Here's some fun facts for everyone- lightning over the past 30 years has killed an average of 62 people per year. E Coli H7 only killed something like 52. Now divide that 52 by how many people got it from spinach... You have a BETTER CHANCE of dieing from a lightning strike than from e coli on Spinach.Everyone can relax now. (To answer the question: No. I don't wash my spinach.)


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One person said i hope they sue the he-l out of the company's , this is all figured in rather than create better safety standards, which costs them more money, its cheaper to defend them against the law suits. An example of this was ford motor company rather than add a 10 dollar part to the ford pintos gas tank it was cheaper to let people burn to death.

Soul searching in the UK

UK's Independent asks: The Big Question: Have supermarkets become just too powerful in Britain? From the lede:
Because the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has said that the UK's four biggest supermarkets, Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury's, colluded with dairies to keep the price of milk and other dairy goods artificially high between 2002 and 2003. The watchdog says that consumers ended up paying £270m over the odds for milk, cheese and butter as a result of the price-fixing deal. It has added fresh impetus to the argument that the UK's supermarkets have become so big that they are able to dictate to suppliers and customers alike, with decisions on how much consumers should pay being decided by a small group of executives.

TK: I'm particularly intrigued by the last sentence "...UK supermarkets have become so big that they are able to dictate to suppliers and customers alike, with decision on how much consumers should pay being decided by a small group of executives." How much does this resemble the U.S., when retail executives determine what the retail price should be and then work that price back to the farm level. Is the sharing of information between buyer and seller leading to greater power for the retailer?