Two articles just dropped into our inbox here at BuyLocalPA.org.  They're from two very different publications but both touching on an increasingly common theme: the safety of our food supply.  One discusses whether consumers should have to cook every food to a "kill" temperature to insure safe ingestion.  The other highlights a growing area of concern for small-scale livestock producers here in PA and beyond: whether proposed regulations meant to make meat products more traceable could present an unfair (or even unwarranted) burden.  Here are excerpts from each:

The frozen pot pies that sickened an estimated 15,000 people with salmonella in 2007 left federal inspectors mystified... The pie maker, ConAgra Foods... could not find the culprit. It also tried cooking the vegetables at high temperatures, a strategy the industry calls a "kill step," to wipe out any lingering microbes. But the vegetables turned to mush in the process.

So ConAgra - which sold more than 100 million pot pies last year under its popular Banquet label - decided to make the consumer responsible for the kill step. The "food safety" instructions and four-step diagram on the 69-cent pies offer this guidance: "Internal temperature needs to reach 165° F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots."

Increasingly, the corporations that supply Americans with processed foods are unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients. In this case, ConAgra could not pinpoint which of the more than 25 ingredients in its pies was carrying salmonella. Other companies do not even know who is supplying their ingredients, let alone if those suppliers are screening the items for microbes and other potential dangers, interviews and documents show.

Yet the supply chain for ingredients in processed foods - from flavorings to flour to fruits and vegetables - is becoming more complex and global as the drive to keep food costs down intensifies. As a result, almost every element, not just red meat and poultry, is now a potential carrier of pathogens, government and industry officials concede.

Read the Full Article at NYTimes.com

HARRISBURG, Pa. - If Thursday's meeting on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) at the Farm Show Complex was any indication, then finding a solution to the question on a workable system is far from over.  Dozens of passionate and at times angry farmers and industry people showed up for the day-long meeting... While it was the hope of USDA officials to get some consensus on the program, they instead got an earful from people who feel the agency has lost touch with their concerns and feel it will overburden them with paperwork and costs...

Most speakers, who identified themselves as either small farmers or supporting small farms, said the system is a potential infringement on civil liberties while others feel it violates religious freedoms of Plain Sect groups such as the Amish and Mennonites...

"I understand the supposed benefit of being able to track where diseased animals have been," said Maureen Diaz of Gettysburg, Pa. But she added that it won't make a difference if the fundamental problems of good animal husbandry are not addressed first.  "Animal disease is not the problem of the small farmer. It is the problem of the factory farm, not the local farmer," she said.

Read the Full Article at LancasterFarming.com

Here at BuyLocalPA.org, we think the most important thing anyone - whether a farmer, government official or mere "eater" - can do to reduce risk is to make the food system as locally-based as possible. A safe food system is built on trust, and trust is built on actual human relationships. Such relationships are harder to maintain the larger and more diffuse the food system becomes.  With a local approach to eating, these relationships just naturally come as part of the package, adding interest, information, and yes, even safety to your shopping experience. Comments, anyone?