Bacterial Contamination (or, the cost of doing business)

Following my rather unpleasant bout with food poisoning in Michigan and the whole California spinach debacle (not related), I've been contemplating microbes and the elimination of such from food products, which has led me back to one of my age-old dilemmas.  But more on that later.

If I'm understanding the story correctly, the infected spinach came from ORGANIC farms using contaminated cow manure fertilizer.  This bit of information was not at all surprising.  They're organic farms.  They have to use manure (or some other natural, organic substance like compost) to fertilize, and some cows naturally carry hazardous strains of E. coli.  As the saying goes, shit happens.

However, if you wanted to guarantee a completely clean bag of spinach, you could.  But that would require more stringent screening, more (clean) farm workers, more water filtration, more pest control, and more infrastructure in general.

Or you could go in a completely different direction and use chemical fertilizers, filtered and/or sterilized water, and filtered-air greenhouses or grow lamps.  I'm speaking, of course, of hydroponics.

Whatever happened to that, anyway?  When I was much younger, it sounded like the agriculture of the future, of space.  Now, not a word, aside from the underground rumblings of pot farmers.  I wonder if this spinach scare might resurrect it.      :)

In any case, the problem here, as it is with all things, is cost.  This is a gross oversimplification, but I'm writing a blog entry, not an economic treatise.  To trim this down and humor my über-short attention span, let's return to list form:

- Agricultural companies (and farms) are in the business of making money, not growing crops for the good of mankind

- Extra preventative measures = extra money going to production = less profits

- Companies don't like to lower profits, so, barring foreign competition, less profits = higher prices for consumers

Of course, this makes complete sense to anyone who took economics (or has a functional brain, really).  The more interesting aspect of rising cost occurs when consumer prices rise to the point where the public stops buying the item in question.

What is the equilibrium price for spinach?  If you could find spinach that was guaranteed to be clean, how much would you pay for it?  $2 / pound?  $5 / pound?  $15 / pound?

Obviously (to me, at least), no one would pay $15 / pound for spinach.  It's not worth it, mostly because there are so many alternatives out there.  But what if all vegetables suddenly were infected by E. coli at the same time?  How much would you pay for clean spinach then?

To put this in another light, and explore my recurring dilemma, let's look at something for which there is not a viable, widely available substitute.  Like gasoline.  At what point will gas become so expensive that people will stop buying it?  $5 / gallon?  $10 / gallon?

My dilemma?  Nothing less than a question of small government vs. big govenment, or, in it's most basic sense, conservatism vs. liberalism.

More later, as this is way too long already.  And has the makings of a synopsis of my views on life.  Yikes.

 

P.S. - The A's are leading the Twins, 2-0, in the top of the third.  Go A's!

P.P.S. - More importantly, go Tigers!  The Evil Empire must be defeated.