Category: The Animal Kingdom

Reading about the current deadly listeria outbreak that may have killed as many as 16 in the U.S. so far reminds me of visits to Third-World countries when I was a young sailor.

My shipmates and I during port visits in places like Subic Bay and Jakarta would get — and I know this might be hard to believe — two-to-three sheets to the wind and seek out some late-night food before heading back to the ship. Often the chow would be something barbecued on a stick — like monkey or pork or don’t ask, don’t care. This was despite all the warnings we got about food safety while visiting foreign countries. What can I say? At least we were drinking beer and not the water.

I never got sick once from eating the local food on my seven-month deployment. I got sick as a dog from a Hickory Farms ham my folks sent me. It’s best I don’t describe the illness because just the description alone might leave you with one of the symptoms I experienced. Eeeeee! Fortunately, the illness only struck me overnight. I suppose the toxins found no safe haven to hide once my body completed expelling everything from everywhere.

Perhaps the fact that I was 21 or 22 years old helped stave off the food-borne-illness-on-a-stick I may have otherwise experienced on those late night din-dins on Magsaysay Drive in OIangapo or wherever the hell I was in Jakarta.

Nowadays I might not fare so well at 55 and sporting a few bodily glitches, with either foreign street food or even something from the tasty samples in my local supermarket.

The outbreak from listeria is the worst such “multi-state” food-borne illness in quite awhile. Even though the CDC knows the origin — the cantaloupes from Jensen Farms in Holly, Colo., — the agency has not yet discovered or released what caused the outbreak. There are a number of possible reasons for the disease just as a myriad of foods can carry the illness.

I spent about five years reporting on and writing about water pollution caused by large dairy farms. Now, I can’t say with certainty that I know if any of those farms ever caused listeria. The big issue with which I was tasked to write so much about cow crap was nutrients — phosphorus in particular — fed to the cattle. Heavy rains and the use of manure as fertilizer contributed to runoff that fueled spectacular algal growth downstream. This could cause all kinds of problems for cities that got their water from this particular river. The water tasted like crap, figuratively speaking.

Such pollution can cause listeria. It is not the only cause. And it isn’t a simple issue with a simple solution. Dairy farmers today, as is the case with other types of food production, are wrapped up in “economics of scale.” That means in the simplest and crudest of explanations, that certain factors cause a producer’s average cost per unit to fall as the scale of output is increased. In dairy farming or beef production, one needs more animals to survive in the marketplace. But there is only so much space for such large-scale production so an assembly-line type operation becomes necessary. Hence the pejorative term used by environmental activists “factory farming.”

Now I like milk and milk products. I am crazy about cheeses. Oh how I love cheeses. But I probably should go easy on cheese and I’ve never been a great milk drinker. I use non-fat milk for my cereal. Every now and then I like a well-crafted (by me) White Russian. Of course, even though milk gives the drink its name it is the vodka that makes it an adult beverage and the Kahlúa which provides the taste. That said, the sometimes humorous and sometimes heart-tugging California dairy farmer TV commercials give me heartburn.

The image of the pastoral setting for the contented dairy cow and the good wholesome Anglo-American farmers who proclaim their dairy is a “family farm” is more often than not, a misleading picture. The dairy industry certainly isn’t spending the big loot on these TV spots for fun. Big dairies seem to leave a wake of pollution battles everywhere they go.

It is very, very difficult to compete in the dairy business without a whole bunch, hundreds, of cows. Sure, these farms are owned by families most of the time but the business model includes large-scale cooperatives and some dairies are even owned by large corporations.

Listeria is just one of the diseases that can be spread by today’s big-time farming. I’m not saying it caused this outbreak. We don’t know the answer to that  yet. I certainly don’t do the bidding for PETA or vegans, even though they have their right to their opinions. I like meat. It’s good to eat. As is its byproducts. Nevertheless, water pollution endangers lives of people: you, your kids, your grandkids even your cows and favorite cow dog. If you are anti-government that’s fine. But this is a problem that doesn’t appear it will be solved in the market place. That is, unless your solution is for most of your customers to die.