How Do They Come to These Conclusions?

Bienenbuettel farm.  Does this name ring a bell?  Germany’s version of the CDC has determined that the recent outbreak of E. Coli, a bacteria that normally occurs in the lower gut of warm blooded animals and manufactures Vitamin K for the host, but of which, virulent strains can cause severe illness and even death when introduced into the upper gut, was caused by bean sprouts from an organic farm, Bienenbuettel farm. 

The organic farm was tested up one side and down the other, thousands of tests were run on all of its produce and facilities but nothing, not one speck of the offending strain of E. Coli could be found any where on the farm.  Yet, because the sickest of the people who came down with the infection all ate bean sprouts, the farm is tagged as the source.

Mind you, I have not seen any official reports I am just digesting and regurgitating, in my own words, what the major global news papers are saying as of June tenth.  No trace of the offending organism found any where on a thoroughly tested farm and its produce, and still the farm gets tagged.

My take?

No hand wringing is necessary.  Hand washing perhaps and plenty of it on and off the farm.  But no hand wringing.  Not about farming and not even about organic farming. 

Yep, folks have gotten sick in the past and most assuredly they will in the future, when they unwittingly ingest tainted food products.  Usually the products are poorly cared for after they leave the farm and especially before they enter the mouth, but the farmer gets tagged. 

The farmer gets tagged because we all know, or should know, that food is closely related to shit, before and after.  There is a very close association, always has been.  And only when we begin to eat things that are no way related to animals and there by miss out on many easily gained nutritional substances from sunlight and earth made accessible to us via the animals God gave us to tend and eat, and when we cease to use the most reasonable source for fertilizing and bringing nutrition to the non-animal products that we do eat, we will never get away from the possible contamination of our food stuffs with E. Coli and other potentially hazardous but naturally occurring organisms.

If I were to turn into a germ-a-phobe, which more than likely I never will, I would definitely begin by never eating in a fast food restaurant again.  Not because they can’t cook the food properly, they can’t, but that is the least scary thing they can or can’t do, but because they have to have big signs in the bathroom about employees washing their hands before returning to work and now some managers or owners are so convinced of the inability of their employees to do in the bathroom what my momma taught me when I was little, now they require the employees to wash their hands at the hand washing station in the food service area when they return to it.  A great idea, but hardly comforting for this latent germ-a-phobe.  What about the food service worker who puts their whole fuzzy headed, uncombed, slimmed up head in under the sneeze guard in order to complete my french fry order?  The head scraped the lower edge of the plastic going in and coming out.  Oh yum. 

Or how ’bout the worker who has touched everything in sight, including her face and the orifices found there but continues slapping my naked food together for me?  Oh don’t gasp, she had gloves on the whole time.  See?  Food service gloves, I’m safe.

And if I do suddenly become a germ-a-phobe and run from the fast food chain screaming in my new revelation, trip over a curb and gain a compound fracture of my arm, don’t take me to a hospital.  Trust me, I’ve worked in restaurants and hospitals and on farms.  Take me to the farm, plunk me down next to the fella that stitches up docked tails, ripped lips, torn ears.  Let him, or her, set my bone and stitch me up with dental floss swabbing me down with a generous slather of diluted iodine in his “surgical kit”.  ‘Cuz if I were to turn into a hand-wringing germ-a-phobe, that is where I would feel the safest. 

And then bring me an egg sandwich that the farm girl made and just set it up there on the fence post where the turkey sometimes roosts, I’ll get it when the farmer finishes with my owie.

‘Cuz I’m just sure that if it wasn’t terrorists that somehow infected the bean sprouts after they left the farm then maybe it was from human contamination somewhere along the way (remember, not a trace, not a speck of the identifiable strain of E. Coli was found on Bienenbuettel farm).  And if I could, I’d have the pigs handle all my food stuffs and I’d hang out with them for my company and entertainment, ‘cuz they are cleaner than most non-farmer people and the terrorists most likely aren’t gonna spray biological warfare stuff out in the toolies.  But that’s only if I were a hand-wringer. 

Which I’m not.