Participating in the Food System

Foodborne illness has been all over the news, specifically a Cyclospora outbreak in conventional lettuce and a Campylobacter outbreak in raw milk. The work to trace these outbreaks back to their source reveals something many Idahoans have long understood. When you don't grow your food, or know who did, your risk decisions are in someone else's hands. 

That gets us thinking about even more reasons to choose local. Contamination can happen anywhere food is grown, processed, or handled, so local food isn’t a guarantee, but it does offer something the conventional system doesn't: participation. 

In the conventional system, unraveling which farm, which processor, which link in the chain failed is no easy task. There are numerous "touch points" early in the supply chain and a similar number of touch points later on (FDA, Commodity Specific Food Safety Guidelines for the Lettuce and Leafy Greens Supply Chain). As federal agencies work to find the source, you're left with a choice to keep eating as you were or avoid an entire category of food altogether. With that many hands and that many miles between field and plate, you end up trusting a system, not a person. 

Knowing your farmer changes that. It's not just a friendly chat at the farmers market; it's somewhere to direct your questions. You can ask how your food is fertilized, how it's washed and handled, and who else touches it along the way. If something does go wrong, you can ask what happened and what's changing. You get to have a conversation with the person who knows the whole journey your food has taken, start to finish, and make a more informed decision. 

We choose locally grown food in part because it's empowering. The Cyclospora outbreak is just another reminder of how little control we have when we don't know our farmer and how much changes when we do.