The King Nut company recalled two different brands of peanut butter this week, after an open 5 gallon bucket tested positive for the strain of salmonella that's sickened more than 400 people in 42 states.
When I heard this news I couldn't help thinking of the debate that's been raging the past few weeks over the issue of whether or not farmers' market food is actually safer than industrial food. The controversy was spurred (this time around) by Bill Marler's list of the top ten food safety challenges we'll face in 2009, which slotted farmers' markets in the #2 position.
It's been a silly debate, to be sure, with everyone involved using the issue to press their own agenda. I live and breathe farmers' markets so I've argued for their safety, based on my conviction that producers who I encounter face to face are more accountable and more concerned for my safety that industrialized behemoths. Folks who live and breathe food safety won't consider farmers' market food a safe alternative without extensive laboratory tests to prove it.
So, at the risk of beating a dead horse and continuing to lobby for my own agenda, I just have to say that if you have a problem with a product you buy at a farmers' market, the vendor who sold it to you won't have resort to a tracking system to find out where that product came from, because they'll know they produced it themselves. And they won't have to recall multiple brands because their name, the name of the company that actually produced the product, is right there on the label.
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