TFA could really benefit from a concise thesis statement. It jumps around randomly and repeats facts that don't appear to be building a strong case for anything specific. Reading between the lines, it seems like the author believes the guidance document should include more on supply chain water testing, but I don't have enough context to know what reason they think it was not included or why they consider that reasoning to be flawed.
The article appears to be trying to smuggle in a notion of “the organism cannot be killed in water” via a path of indirectly repeating the reference that the water cannot kill the organism in the food; because the chemical treatment of the water is therefore insufficient to avoid cross contamination, testing becomes an absolute requirement.
I get real suspicious of ulterior motives whenever such equivocation makes a prominent appearance in an argument.
What is cyclospora, anyway? It is not a bacterium or thing that I am familiar with. It is parasitic; it is a eukaryote; beyond those two definitions, it might as well be an alien from Venus because I'm not familiar.
How does it get into produce? Does it seep inside from irrigation? Fall on it in droplets? Grow inside the vegetables, waiting for human host? Where does it come from?
Just how do you protect from it and mitigate it?
By the way, chopped salads and processed produce isn't typically washed at the destination. It's not a good thing to wash a salad you're just about ready to eat. Once I grabbed a "salad spinner" gadget at the thrift store that was supposed to spin the moisture out of a large volume of salad, but if food service set about washing their already-shredded lettuce, we'd have soggy yucky tacos.
Taylor Farms is a very big player in the produce market. Every salad kit I've ever bought has been either Taylor Farms or a store-brand, and I'd wager most of those store-brands are simply Taylor Farms in disguise. To know they were supplying Taco Bell and other food service... they must be real big.
I picked up salad kits at Target. They say Salinas. I believe they are non-Taylor. But there was plenty of Taylor Farm product on the shelves as well, also professing a Salinas origin. I would suppose that we are still dealing with a chiefly Mexican outbreak, and that Salinas, CA is safe for now?
> What is cyclospora, anyway? It is not a bacterium or thing that I am familiar with. It is parasitic; it is a eukaryote; beyond those two definitions, it might as well be an alien from Venus because I'm not familiar.
It's a protist, which is pretty much "miscellaneous eukaryote".
I've been buying local produce, when I can. I signed up for a CSA share in the spring and get an assortment of fresh veggies every week. The same place does have a local farm stand, so you don't have to sign up for the whole summer if you just want to buy some veggies.
There are a couple of "Saturday market" type things in my town, where people have booths selling produce also, but from what I can see there is no requirement that they grow their own produce, and I suspect they just buy from SYSCO or wherever. They always have things that aren't in season where I live.
I had this exact same epiphany when going to one of my local "farmers markets" last saturday. I noticed a suspicious amount of vegetables that should've died during the last few weeks of this spiraling heat and they were all perfectly green.
It made me suspicious and I found myself thinking about bylaws for farmers markets. I don't think there are any; so I'm sure there is nothing stopping vendors from just reselling sysco products for "organic" labeled, "locally-grown" products.
Wish there was a feasible way of checking, for now I will continue to buy my goods from Whole Foods and Natural Groceries near me.
In Florida there have been some articles talking about how some local farmers markets produce may actually be the rejected produce from the southern grocery chain Publix, rather than local growers selling directly.
There’s some rather infamous examples I’ve seen recently of people unpacking grocery store bins at farmers markets. There is no provenance around the origin of the goods in most markets, more common of a problem than people might think.
In Central Texas when peaches are in season people set up roadside stalls, but there’s no guarantee you are getting an actual local grown peach instead of whatever was on the shelf at the grocery store that day
Generally speaking, from having family who were organic market garden farmers who also did a few farmers markets stalls…
Smaller markets tend to be better and more curated/policed by the organizers. This typically means you are driving to a smaller town on the outskirts of a larger urban area. If you are an infrequent buyer this is probably your best bet, plus just the eyeball test.
If you are a weekly shopper, it’s a bit easier to sus out reliably even for the larger markets. Find booths that have the same people staffing them most of the time, who can speak to the product. Look for “ugly” produce - the stuff that looks like it’s made for display at Whole Foods is almost always going to be commercially grown since those varieties are for aesthetics vs. taste. And of course look for booths that generally tend to only have stuff that is in season. Their product mix should shift throughout the growing season in most places.
The latter can by a tiny bit tricky since some local farms are going to have hoop houses and even greenhouses for a few different kinds of veggies. The hoop houses especially are used in part to “time shift” the growing season so as to take advantage of a market where you are a few weeks early or late compared to competitors.
Certainly not perfect but most of the time it’s immediately obvious to me which booths are obviously simply reselling. I’m sure some operations can fake it a bit better, but I would be surprised if I was wrong very often on false positives.
We took our garden more seriously this year and we are totally overwhelmed with tomatoes and cucumbers. I planted potatoes for the first time this year and they are ready to go. Had a huge pea harvest earlier in the summer. Unfortunately it's been too hot for our lettuce.
It's been fun planning meals around what we have (supplementing what we need from the store obviously)
Playbook: anti-regulation entities capture government, strip down regulators, and when disaster ensues, point to regulators' inability to prevent or address issues as an argument to further scale down the watchdog's power.
How Food Irradiation Works
https://www.cdc.gov/radiation-health/food-irradiation/index....
https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publication/?...
I get real suspicious of ulterior motives whenever such equivocation makes a prominent appearance in an argument.
What is cyclospora, anyway? It is not a bacterium or thing that I am familiar with. It is parasitic; it is a eukaryote; beyond those two definitions, it might as well be an alien from Venus because I'm not familiar.
How does it get into produce? Does it seep inside from irrigation? Fall on it in droplets? Grow inside the vegetables, waiting for human host? Where does it come from?
Just how do you protect from it and mitigate it?
By the way, chopped salads and processed produce isn't typically washed at the destination. It's not a good thing to wash a salad you're just about ready to eat. Once I grabbed a "salad spinner" gadget at the thrift store that was supposed to spin the moisture out of a large volume of salad, but if food service set about washing their already-shredded lettuce, we'd have soggy yucky tacos.
Taylor Farms is a very big player in the produce market. Every salad kit I've ever bought has been either Taylor Farms or a store-brand, and I'd wager most of those store-brands are simply Taylor Farms in disguise. To know they were supplying Taco Bell and other food service... they must be real big.
I picked up salad kits at Target. They say Salinas. I believe they are non-Taylor. But there was plenty of Taylor Farm product on the shelves as well, also professing a Salinas origin. I would suppose that we are still dealing with a chiefly Mexican outbreak, and that Salinas, CA is safe for now?
It's a protist, which is pretty much "miscellaneous eukaryote".
There are a couple of "Saturday market" type things in my town, where people have booths selling produce also, but from what I can see there is no requirement that they grow their own produce, and I suspect they just buy from SYSCO or wherever. They always have things that aren't in season where I live.
It made me suspicious and I found myself thinking about bylaws for farmers markets. I don't think there are any; so I'm sure there is nothing stopping vendors from just reselling sysco products for "organic" labeled, "locally-grown" products.
Wish there was a feasible way of checking, for now I will continue to buy my goods from Whole Foods and Natural Groceries near me.
https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fab...
In Central Texas when peaches are in season people set up roadside stalls, but there’s no guarantee you are getting an actual local grown peach instead of whatever was on the shelf at the grocery store that day
Smaller markets tend to be better and more curated/policed by the organizers. This typically means you are driving to a smaller town on the outskirts of a larger urban area. If you are an infrequent buyer this is probably your best bet, plus just the eyeball test.
If you are a weekly shopper, it’s a bit easier to sus out reliably even for the larger markets. Find booths that have the same people staffing them most of the time, who can speak to the product. Look for “ugly” produce - the stuff that looks like it’s made for display at Whole Foods is almost always going to be commercially grown since those varieties are for aesthetics vs. taste. And of course look for booths that generally tend to only have stuff that is in season. Their product mix should shift throughout the growing season in most places.
The latter can by a tiny bit tricky since some local farms are going to have hoop houses and even greenhouses for a few different kinds of veggies. The hoop houses especially are used in part to “time shift” the growing season so as to take advantage of a market where you are a few weeks early or late compared to competitors.
Certainly not perfect but most of the time it’s immediately obvious to me which booths are obviously simply reselling. I’m sure some operations can fake it a bit better, but I would be surprised if I was wrong very often on false positives.
It's been fun planning meals around what we have (supplementing what we need from the store obviously)