There must be awards for everything.

Whenever a university or company talks about recreating itself to be more excellent, I’m reminded of Homer Simpson winning the First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.

Homer is awarded $2,000 and agrees to loan the money to his bitter half-brother, Herb Powell (no relation) who becomes rich again by making a machine to translate a baby’s babbling into actual English. Amy figures she’s already mastered the sounds of baby Sorenne and can differentiate the cries for “I need to be fed” and “I just had a huge dump.”

With that in mind, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was honored yesterday with the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement “Golden Checkmark” Award for his leadership and support of mandatory government inspection of food safety systems within the produce industry. 

Joe Pezzini, a leafy greens farmer and chairman of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement Board said that with the creation of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, a system is now in place which involves mandatory government inspections to ensure food safety practices are being followed by California leafy greens farmers.  Since the LGMA’s inception in April 2007 nearly 1,000 audits of California leafy greens farms have been conducted by government inspectors. 

The same government inspectors that visited Peanut Corporation of America in Georgia? Or William Tudor’s butcher shop in Wales?

I thought it was the producer’s job to provide a safe product, not the babysitter’s.