Raw Dish!

from The Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2008:

"Tomatoes are especially vexing because of the complex path they take from field to fork.  Because tomatoes are perishable, suppliers typically rely on more than one grower to fill orders.  Once the tomatoes come into a processing facility, they're usually sorted based on ripeness, size and grade, not origin.  Sometimes, the FDA says, tomatoes picked in Florida are shipped to Mexico for packaging before being returned to the U.S. for sale.  Once tomatoes are sliced, diced and mixed for salad bars, deli counters or supermarket salsas, tracking their provenance becomes nearly impossible."

I added the italics.  Can you believe this, how many people, pairs of hands, handle conventional food before it is sold to consumers?  How many runny noses drip on our food?  How many fingers that just wiped or picked a nose, scratched inside of and ear, or picked something from between a tooth touch our food?  How can we not expect to have outbreaks of disease?  I'm not faulting the behaviors; these are all very normal human animal actions.  It's when we forfeit our responsibility to take care of our health & food that we introduce countless unknown factors into our lives and put our health at risk.

Making a conscious effort to know where our food comes from would benefit every one of us.