killer food
Posted by Meg
Food gone wrong, food misused, food afoul can kill you. That’s true of a lot of things (botched circus tricks, shouting “movie!” in a firehouse, poor planned and/or badly executed practical jokes, etc.), but it’s especially true of what you ingest. Two stories in the news have caught my eye to the end of food danger in the last couple of weeks: the couple in Atlanta sentenced to life in prison for starving their baby with a vegan diet, and the bevy of Chinese products that have bee coming ashore tainted and deadly (toothpaste today, pet food the other week).
For me, both issues boil to down to choice and personal responsibility. In the case of the vegan parents, and any parents really, it was their responsibility to make sure that their baby nutritionally under cover. It’s no mystery that vegan and vegetarian practitioners have to pay close attention to what they’re eating in order to get all the right vitamins and minerals needed to stay healthy, and responsible vegans understand this about their choice of diet. It follows that responsible vegan parents would understand that they need to make extra sure that all the good stuff’s there in their childrens’ diets as well. Unlike Nina Planck, I do not think that a vegan diet is inherantly cruel for children. I just think that you’ve got to back up your choice responsibly. Plenty of happy, healthy, well adjusted vegan kids in the world. Besides, food and parenting takes a lot of faces in the news. Remember Connor McCreaddie in the UK? He was just about carted off to social services because he was obese, and his mother was accused for his condition. Unlike a baby, however, Connor was 14, and arguably needed to take some responsibility of his own… but that’s a point aside. End of story: people make their own choices, and have the responsibility to back them up, vegan parents or otherwise.
However, I find this tainted Chinese stuff coming ashore to be a much greater problem because often (like in the case of pet food, toothpaste) we’re not even made aware of where products are coming from in order to make informed choices, hold up our end of the choice/responsibility thing. That strikes me as something that should be more closely monitored. The Post article up there talked about a ton of stuff that’s been rejected from China this year. That’s worth a public outcry.
May 22nd, 2007 at 4:47 pm
You’d think that these companies would be being very careful to police the safety of their own food products. In fact, I’d go so far as to say most of them certainly are. What could be more scary to the consumer than tainted food? So, at the store, they make an unconcious choice to trust the brands that they are buying.
Imagine what would happen if poisonous filler material were used in Velveeta, for instance, resulting in the deaths of dozens of people. Kraft would probably go bankrupt, or at least lose billions of dollars. The food suppliers know this. Just look at how freaked out the pet-food industry got after their issue; I bet sales of generic pet food vs. name brand are down significantly.
Selling tainted food is business suicide for any reputable company.