Food and Safety

One thing that I should make perfectly clear before I say anything else is that the United States enjoys one of the safest food supplies in the world, in many respects. Most of the ranchers, farmers, producers, distributors, grocers and restaurateurs in the US are highly reputable and genuinely try to protect all of us from illness caused by food mishandling, contamination, or other adulteration. No one wants to cause foodborne disease outbreaks, and certainly no one wants the bad publicity associated with being identified as the source of an outbreak. That is a good thing, because none of the federal or state agencies responsible for regulating the food supply and ensuring food safety have all the resources necessary to police all of the producers involved in bringing our food to the table. Without reputable industry partners, many more instances of foodborne disease would occur.

Of course, foodborne illness occurs anyway, despite our best efforts to prevent it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 76 million cases of foodborne and diarrheal diseases occur each year, with 5,000 of those cases being fatal. The diseases are typically caused by bacteria, viruses and parasites, although toxins also contribute some burden of illness as well.
Many factors contribute to illness, usually a lapse in temperature controls, improper cooking techniques, cross-contamination of raw foods (like salads) with bacteria from meat or poultry, or poor hygiene by a particular food handler. Each outbreak is unique in some way, but there is a range of usual suspect points of failure that can be predicted and prevented. And most of the time, disease is prevented.

One thing that worries me about our current food production and distribution system is how centralized it has become. Centralization and concentration of production helps achieve efficiencies and keep costs low, but it also allows many more people to get sick when something goes wrong. Some examples, and recent experience, illustrates this point.

In 1994, more than 2,000 people became ill from ice cream contaminated with salmonella. The ice cream was pasteurized, and no one could figure out how it was getting contaminated. Later it was determined that the pasteurized ice cream was being shipped in tanker trucks to another location for packaging. After unloading the ice cream, the trucking company was picking up liquid egg products and hauling that load, and then sending the truck back to get more ice cream. The contamination was occurring in the tanker, from the raw eggs. The producer didn't own the trucks, and had no idea what was happening.

In 1996, more than 10,000 people in Japan became ill with E. coli O157:H7, from radish sprouts. Most of the cases occurred among school aged children. Part of what facilitated the huge number of children infected was that school lunches were being prepared in a central kitchen and then distributed all over the country to be served. When contaminated sprouts, which are notoriously difficult to keep clean, were served to the children, thousands became ill. The centralization and scale is what enabled the size of the outbreaks.

More recently, hundreds of people became ill from peanut butter contaminated with salmonella when a single plant had production problems. And, more than 200 people in 44 states became ill with E. coli from eating raw spinach produced on a single farm that had problems keeping animals out of the large spinach fields.

Food no longer stays local. One producer in California spread disease to 44 states. In 1996, raspberries from Guatemala were contaminated with Cyclospora oocysts, causing disease in multiple states. Today the food can come from anywhere, and go everywhere. Identifying the exact source of an outbreak of disease requires collaboration across many agency lines and political boundaries. Once a food item is determined, traceback activities may frequently take investigators around the world.

All of this activity takes time, and people may continue to be exposed while the investigation is still underway. But it also means that the well-intentioned seller has no idea that they are spreading disease, and may in fact be doing everything right that is under their control. If the contamination occurs in another part of the food chain, innocent producers, distributors and sellers may become implicated in the mind of the public, unfairly. That is more of a problem for industry, but it is also a problem for consumers.

My point is that today we have a food supply that maximizes convenience, but it is also so complex, it enables disease to spread widely before problems are known. The complexity of the food chain also means that once a problem is identified, it still takes a tremendous amount of effort to really pinpoint where the breakdown of otherwise effective controls is taking place.

In the past, our production was not as centralized. An outbreak would be more limited, and fewer people would become ill. That does not mean less overall illness would occur, because many small producers may have been less aware than modern industrial firms are of proper food handling procedures. It is still true that outbreaks today, when they occur, have the potential to impact more people.

What solution do I have for this dilemma? None really, but I do have some ideas about what individuals can do to become more connected with their food. It is really hard to feel connected to food that comes from the vast industrial food chain. Tomorrow I'll share some thoughts about how to bring back a sense of connection with food, and hopefully enhance our enjoyment of food.

Want Fries With That?

Tonight I was listening to NPR and heard an interesting piece on Marketplace about food, marketers, and the diet industry. I've actually been thinking about food quite a bit lately (and not because I'm craving a midnight snack). As an epidemiologist, I have some experience investigating foodborne disease outbreaks, and some concern about the concentration of our food production and distribution systems. I am also an amateur food geek, and I love to cook. So I have food interests beyond the occupational concerns, so to speak.

The American food industry produces 3,800 calories of food each day per person in this country. That is substantially more food per person than we really need to eat to live a healthy lifestyle. Add to that the power of advertising and we are constantly bombarded with messages encouraging us to eat a snack, to go out to eat, to have it our way and to get it right now. Whether we are even hungry or not. So it shouldn't surprise us that there is an epidemic of obesity in the United States.

But even if I weren't an epidemiologist, with a career in public health, as a food geek, there is something about the current food production and distribution system that bothers me from an aesthetic point of view: so much of the food we have available to us is, to put it frankly, awful. Not just bad for you, it's bad food. Bland or way too salty, limp and unappealing. Over cooked and over produced.

Before you get too turned off by this set of observations, let me reassure you. I am not about to argue that everyone needs to start eating a strict diet of barley grains, soy proteins, raw vegetables, and no seasonings. No tofu recommendations, no polemics against fast food joints, no rants about corn sweeteners and such. I'm just sorry to see the current state of food, and I am worried about the safety of our food supply.

Too many people today have grown up without having a clue about where food comes from, or how to prepare and enjoy food. I had the great fortune as a child of living on my grandfather's farm until I was 9 years old, and I got to see first hand where the food came from. It came from the garden. We grew corn, okra, peas, beans, cucumbers, squash, peanuts, watermelons, peaches, strawberries, potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, tomatoes, pumpkins and cabbages. We raised chickens, pigs and cattle on our place. And we ate that food. We slaughtered pigs and steers, milked the cows, churned the butter, and gathered the eggs. We lived on a family farm. A trip to the store was for buying the relatively few things we did not grow ourselves. Stuff like flour and maple syrup, special spices, corn meal, bologna, hot dogs. But mostly we ate what we produced, my family, my uncle's family, and my grandparents. We had chest freezers and side by side freezers stuffed with food, and in the fall we spent days and hours canning, freezing, drying, preserving all the bounty of the farm.

During the late fall and all winter, we ate last year's crops. By late springtime, stores might be getting low on some things, but by summer we were harvesting fresh vegetables, and then in the fall we went through the whole big harvest process once again. It was hard work at times, but everyone pitched in, because this literally was where dinner came from. And this type of farming was not for hire--the adults all had jobs that paid money. The farming was what we all did, and they did in addition to their jobs.

In 1973 I moved off that farm, and to another state. We left the 100+ acres of farmland for a suburban 1/2 acre lot in a town. We had a small patch where we grew a few pepper plants and tomatoes, but farming was over for us. The groceries came from the store after that. But what that experience taught me was an appreciation for food and a love of feeling connected with what we eat. For the next few days I'll post some thoughts about enjoying food, and my concerns with how our food supply systems put us at risk for disease today. But the next time you eat, think about it a little more than usual. And really, do you want fries with that?

Look Up, While You Can

We may not be alone. Astronomers have found
approximately 230-250 planets outside our solar system in the past few years. Of course, the irony in that is that we seem to have lost one here inside the system, with the demotion of Pluto. I'll leave if for another day to say what I think about Pluto's demise (I'm in favor of Pluto).

Recent estimates are that as many as 10% of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy may have planets orbiting them. And, as Carl Sagan was fond of noting, there are billions of stars out there. Or, as my wife recently told me, there could be twenty bazillion. I'll leave it up to others to figure out what that adds up to.

This is the age of the Exoplanet Hunters, and it is an exciting time. Unless you happen to be someone who found tremendous comfort in the idea that we were alone, and unique in all the universe. But take heart -- no planet out there that we know of has proven to have intelligent life on it, yet. (Insert standard joke about it still being an open question whether Earth has any intelligent life, as well). The Search For Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is trying to change that, but so far the universe is frustratingly silent. And, the space between the galaxies continues to grow as the universe expands, so unless we can find someone else in our neighborhood galaxy, we might as well be alone. Maybe.

Space is marvelous, though, and this is also the age of wonderful and affordable telescopes. There are many types to choose from, and anyone with $200 can buy a telescope that is optically superior to most anything that famous astronomers of previous centuries had access to. Binoculars today are amazing tools for backyard astronomical viewing (just look at the Milky Way through a pair this summer--you'll be amazed what you can see). There are also amazing and affordable solar telescopes that give outstanding views of sunspots and solar flares, during the day. The sun is even totally easy to find, unlike deep space gems with cryptic names like M31 or NGC-1187.

The only real threat to our ability to experience the awe and wonder of astronomy and take advantage of the wonderful tools now available to amateur astronomers is the loss of our night time sky. Light pollution is a huge threat. We waste so much electricity lighting up the night, at such a staggering cost, it is appalling. For a world facing global warming, it is immoral for so many night lights to be burning, wasting fossil fuel resources, and hiding the heavens from our view.

If you want to learn more about preserving the night sky, or reclaiming it, visit the International Dark-Sky Association website at http://www.darksky.org/. After all, if there is someone else out there, wouldn't you like to be able to at least see where they might be looking at us from?

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day. Isn't that a bit ironic? How are you supposed to be happy on a day that is officially set aside for remembering those who have sacrificed, even their lives, in our wars? Today at lunch I asked my wife whether she had any relatives who had fought in either WW II or the Vietnam war. She said she thought some had probably served in WW II, but none in Vietnam, and none since.

My dad worked for the United States Air Force, and I do know people who were in Vietnam. Growing up I heard stories about my uncles who had fought in WW II. One had been with Patton in North Africa, and another had been in Europe. One had been in the South Pacific. One was at Pearl Harbor. They all came home, although one of them reportedly left for Europe with a head of jet black hair, and when he came home, his hair was white as snow for the rest of his life. From the shock and horror of what he saw.

My second cousin Gary was in the Navy during Vietnam. He was a Seabee, one of the sailors who built things (like airstrips). Part of our Vietnam strategy was to pave the jungle over with concrete. His job in Vietnam was to drive a bulldozer. But he went, and he returned. He flew back from Asia and landed at Gulfport, Mississippi. Right as Hurricane Camille hit, in 1969. My parents had gone down to pick him up, and the three of them got stuck at a National Guard Armory shelter during landfall. My sister and I were still in Georgia, with my grandparents. I was five and my sister was two. They drove back from Mississippi in my mom's Ford Galaxy 500, with the windshield and all the other windows blown completely out of the car. They had to drive all the way to Alabama before they could find a working telephone to call and let us know that Gary was in, and they were all okay. Now that I am older, I can only imagine what that was like for Gary. Surviving his tour of duty in Vietnam, and landing in a Category 5 hurricane. Welcome home, sailor.

I remember a Memorial Day weekend, probably around 1972. That Sunday they had an honor guard of all the men in the church who had served. I remember being surprised to see these guys that I knew as ushers and deacons and Sunday School teachers, marching down the aisle carrying the American Flag and the Christian flag, wearing their uniforms. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, either in full dress uniforms or the everyday stuff. Men I knew as plumbers and carpenters and farmers, car salemen, and such--with sergeants stripes on military coats, wearing medals. Wow--I never knew about that part of their lives.

I remember during Vietnam watching the war on TV with my dad. He watched Walter Cronkite every night to see the lists of dead and wounded that ran each newscast, to see if anyone he knew had been hurt, or killed that day. I remember watching the fall of Saigon on TV, with the helicopters flying off from the US Embassy, evacuating the last to leave.

I remember the 1991 Gulf War, Desert Storm. My cousin Tim was an Army Ranger, and his mother and I were both nervous about what was going on. Tim's unit was not deployed, and that was a short war. Or so we thought at the time. Now we know that it was just the first phase of the current conflict.

It is complicated these days to honor Memorial Day. It is my opinion that the deaths we see each day in Iraq are unnecessary deaths. I think we need to be in Afghanistan, but Iraq is preventing us from being able to succeed elsewhere. President Bush chose to go into Iraq, that was not required.

But the men and women who serve, they deserve our repect. If they weren't there, they would be here, among us, doing normal things. They aren't. They didn't get to have a four day weekend, grilling out, picking strawberries, hiking and biking or going to the lake. With good fortune, they got to stay alive today. For that, we should all be thankful.

What is the purpose of a school?

A family in Wake County is dropping a lawsuit against the Wake County Public School System, because the financial costs have become too burdensome to continue their fight. Lawsuits are not taken lightly by most people who file them. An attorney I talked with once explained to me that 90% of his job is helping people find some alternative to filing a lawsuit or otherwise having to go to court. So why is this family suing the school system, anyway?

They were suing the school system to get their two kids on the same academic calendar. One child was assigned to a school that runs on the traditional calendar, and the other was assigned to a year-round school. The family wanted the two children on the same schedule, to make family life run more smoothly and to let the kids have the same summer schedule. Every request to transfer one child to the other school was denied. Ultimately, they sued. The case has become a protracted and expensive fight, and now they are basically giving up. Defeated by a system that refuses to recognize the primacy of families and communities.

The consolidated Wake County Public School System was the brainchild of a group of legislators, school board members, and county commissioners in Wake County during the 1970s. The combination of the Raleigh City Schools and the rural Wake County Schools was supposed to accomplish several things. First, Raleigh at the time had several schools that were struggling, and the schools were predominantly filled with African-American students. There was concern the system could fall under federal organization due to segregation. Low-tax politicians saw in the opportunity a chance to eliminate one of the two bureaucracies in the county's schools, and help keep property taxes lower by doing so.

A funny thing happened when the issue was put before the voters, however. The ballot was overwhelmingly against consolidation. But the one referendum held on the issue was non-binding, and ultimately the schools were consolidated by an act of the North Carolina General Assembly.

Since the consolidation, one of the mantras of the school system is that they do not look at individual communities, but treat the whole county as one community. Apparently, by extension, they also do not consider the impact of their decisions on individual families, either. For the Holly Springs family in question, the evidence right now suggests that the school system is denying their requests simply because they do not want to set the precedent of making it a priority to keep families on the same calendar. If they can consider placing children in empty classroom seats without regard to what neighborhood they live in or who their siblings are, it (somewhat) simplifies their assignment process.

Some have argued that the purpose of a school is to provide instruction to children. It isn't to satisfy the needs of individual families, neighborhoods, or communities. It isn't to ensure that childcare issues, vacation schedules, and internal family life run smoothly. I suppose that it is true that the main purpose of a school is to teach children.

I just worry that one of the lessons that the Wake County Public School System is teaching our kids is that families don't matter, neighborhoods don't matter, communities don't matter. The other things I worry they are teaching is that in our society the will of the majority of voters is irrelevant, and that stubbornly sticking to a plan that defies common sense just because you can is the proper way to run a public agency. That hardly seems like a civics lesson I want passed on to the next generation.

After all, all they will have to deal with is the aftermath of the Iraq War, global warming, the emergence of China as the next superpower, and the collapse of the Social Security system in the United States. Inflexibly sticking to a plan and ignoring the unintended adverse impacts of doing so really won't make any of those issues more difficult to handle, now, will it?

Here's to Good Days

Why is it in life that tragedy, conflict, disappointment and anger are infinitely more interesting than happiness, contentment, satisfaction and joy? There is no doubt about it. Songwriters write their best songs when they are battling chemical addictions, breaking up with lovers, or losing someone they love to tragic and meaningless death. Book authors are the same. Movies without tension, drama, loss or danger are just boring.

Who wants to hear about how much you love someone who loves you back? Or that everything went okay today? What would we do if we turned on NPR and all we heard were stories about how everything in the world was basically doing great? It would make for a pretty short newscast.

Which is what I have to publish today. A short newscast. Today my wife and I took the day off from work to spend it together, celebrating 14 years of marriage. We went out for a wonderful lunch at the Weathervane, a really nice restaurant in Chapel Hill at Southern Season. We had the house salad, the lobster ravioli pasta special with a creamy tarragon sauce that was fabulous. We ordered absolutely decadent desserts. We took advantage of our daughter being in school to have time together doing things we used to be able to do more of, BC (Before Child).

In other words, we had a really good day. After our daughter came home from school and finished her chores, I grilled burgers for supper and then we went for a good long walk on the American Tobacco Trail with our dog Austin. The temperature was perfect, everyone was in a good mood, and we got to see some quail on the trail (something we had never seen before). In other words, we had a great time together as a family this evening.

Not much news there, is it? Life is good. The marriage is good, the family is healthy, happy, and today was a good day for us. Well, as boring as that may be, I wish you all and us many more good days.

Congress, the President, and Immigration Reform

Okay, no one even knows about this blog, so what do I have to lose by writing what I think about immigration reform? Before I jump off the cliff and into this sinkhole, though, I suppose I should put forward a few disclaimers. First, I am a lifelong Democrat. The first politician I voted for was Bill Clinton--in 1982, when I turned 18, and he was running for Governor of Arkansas. My political awareness came out of watching the Watergate Hearings on TV as a kid, and what I took away from that experience was that Richard Nixon was evil, and I didn't want to have anything to do with a political party that supported him. Hey, what do you expect--I was what, 9 years old at the time?

So, all of that is to say, I am not a big fan of W. But I have plenty of experience with W before he became the president. I lived in Austin, Texas from August 1993-November 2000, so he was my Governor before he was our President. But when I was in Texas, I also had the opportunity to visit the Texas-Mexico border. That area is a land where Spanglish is spoken, and the cultures of Mexico and the United States blend in complicated ways. I have crossed the border from McAllen and Brownsville, from El Paso into Juarez, and at the crossing in Tijuana. I have wandered across the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park and explored both sides of the river.

I once helped run a study of tuberculosis along the US-Mexico border, and visited health clinics on both sides, and some of the poor neighborhoods you can find in border towns. So I have seen places where crossings happen illegally, and I have seen one of the busiest places where people from both sides cross legally--to the tune of hundreds of thousands of times each year.

I say all that to say this--George Bush is right about the need for immigration reform, and I have no problem with what he said about that topic today during his press conference. I may never have voted for him, and I may oppose this chosen war he started without good reasons, but on immigration reform, I think he is pretty much on target.

A lot of people on all sides of the political spectrum can find much in the current bill to oppose. But the president makes a few points that are important. The people are here, people will come, and America needs their participation in our economy. But today they live in fear, the mechanism of their arrival is degrading and life-threatening, and once here they face animosity that is more than they deserve. Politics is supposed to be the art of the possible. Not the ideologically correct, and not necessarily the morally perfect. But today it is possible for us to change our laws to create a legal way for people who are here to complete their journey into our society, or to participate in our economy for a time and return home with dignity.

Wouldn't that be better than what we have today?

Wake County Schools

Some of you may know about the recent turmoil in Apex and in Wake County broadly concerning the Wake County Public School System's plan to convert 22 schools from the traditional academic calendar to a year round academic calendar. A group of local citizens sued the school system and won in court, with the judge ruling that the Board of Education could not force families to attend year round schools, but families could volunteer to have their children do so.

Wake County schools have earned a national reputation for being good schools. And, our daughter has attended a year round school for three years, by our choice. She has done very well on the year round calendar. But I agree with Judge Manning's ruling, and I would have a hard time recommending our public school system to anyone considering moving to Wake County.

Wake County is experiencing hyper growth and development. We are bursting at the seams right now, and no item of local infrastructure is more strained and stressed than our schools. The Office of Growth Management is projecting 8,000 new students next fall, and although I may take that number with a box of salt, there is no denying that we are gaining new students faster than we are building new schools.

In future blogs I am sure I will share more of my thoughts and experiences of being a parent of a child attending Wake County schools. For now, if you are considering moving to Wake County, and if your decision is in part being driven by the reputation of our schools, I'll simply say this. Be prepared for your family to go through an annual gut-wrenching experience called Reassignment. If you have multiple children of various ages, understand that they may be assigned to different schools even if they are siblings that could potentially attend the same school. If you have both elementary school and middle school or high school aged kids, understand that some of them may wind up attending school for 9 straight months (the traditional calendar) while others of them attend school year round. And next year may be completely different than the year before was. And no, it is not possible to plan which schools your children will attend, because feeder patterns change annually between elementary schools and middle schools, and between middle schools and high schools.

At the school level, Wake County schools are certainly better performing than many other schools in North Carolina. We have very good teachers and principals, and the children by and large are learning what they have to learn to do well on standardized tests and get accepted to colleges. Some schools have magnet programs that are excellent. But the overall experience of dealing with the school system, and the year round uncertainty about what will happen next year, places a tremendous burden on families, both psychologically and financially. That is the downside of living in a community that is consistently being touted as a great place to live.

Floyd Landis

I am a cyclist. I ride recreationally, not competitively. I love to watch the Tour de France, though, and there is not much in the world that is more fun than riding a bicycle with a large group of people on a beautiful day. One of my best events was riding the MS 150 from Houston to Austin Texas in May 2000. With 10,000 of my new best friends.

But I have followed fairly closely the events surrounding Floyd Landis and the scandal surrounding his test results after his epic stage that secured his win at the 2006 Tour de France. Landis is having his arbitration hearing in California right now. After reading the testimony, and considering the evidence from all sides, my opinion is that whether Floyd did or did not dope is nowhere near as important a question as the question of whether the system that exists to test for doping and punish cyclists is remotely fair or reasonable. It's not. There is no presumption of innocence, and by World Anti-Doping Agency ethics rules, if a WADA certified lab says an athlete is guilty, no other WADA affiliated lab is allowed to contradict them. They are required to support one another's findings.

My take on all of this is that the French still believe Lance Armstrong used performance enhancing drugs that they cannot prove, so they went after Floyd. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Tyler Hamilton situation wasn't related to anti-Lance beliefs in Europe as well. But the US should not fund or participate in a system where any athlete can be accused and found guilty, by laboratories that do not have to follow established operating procedures, are forbidden to contradict one another, are prohibited from testifying on behalf of an accused athlete, and do not have to open their testing procedures to peer review.

Okay, this is new

Thoughts from Apex.

I'm a complete newbie to the world of blogging, and I have no idea whether anyone will be interested in reading the musings of a 43 year old guy living in one of the fastest growing counties in America, Wake County, North Carolina. But I think it will help me none the less to just write out what I think about what I see and feel as the community I live in struggles with growth, quality of life, education, family and other issues.

I have no idea how often I will be posting, but if anyone reads my musings and cares to respond to any of them, I'll engage you in a conversation. I'll think of this space as a virtual front porch or pub, or a coffee bar without the pastries and double mocha latte calories.

Enough for now

David