Size doesn’t matter. At least not when it comes to whether or not a food producer can effectively manage hazards and lower risks for their customers. Whether sold through Wal-Mart or at the farmers’ market, making or selling safe food (or risk-reduced food) is a value that the operator holds. Or doesn’t. And it’s size independent. 
Back in grad school I saw this while working with greenhouse vegetable growers. Sure, larger operations can be more complicated (lots of staff, more product in or out, more lines to clean and sanitize) but they also have the resources to dedicate more attention to reducing risk.
The small or large, local or not, message seems to be getting picked up, according to the aptly-named governing.com,
The multi-state outbreaks of the last few years — linked to lapses by large food distributors — might lead some to believe that they’re better off shopping local and heading to a neighborhood farmers’ market this fall. But not so fast, experts say. Just because you don’t hear national news reports about outbreaks linked to roadside stands doesn’t mean they don’t happen. They’re just harder to trace back to the original source.
“There are some foods that inherently have risk, whether they go through some mass production or whether they’re being sold at a farmer’s market,” says Joe Russell, public health office at the Flathead City-County (Mont.) Health Department and head of the National Association of City and County Health Officials food safety advisory group. “What happens is the ones that get caught at the national level have usually gone on for a long time. But with one hospitalization in one community, it’s really hard to tell.”
As state revenues recover, some hope that federal, state and local governments will begin to shore up their food inspection ranks and, in turn, reduce the amount of foodborne illness, whether locally grown or nationally distributed.
Relying on regulators to bless a system isn’t smart. Having good vendors who know what they are doing, and why, who can have discussions with patrons about microbial food safety leads to better decisions than just a binder full of adequate inspection results.
Smaller systems, especially those serving niche markets can often do one thing really well. What’s more important than size is whether the folks running the show are paying attention: actively looking for hazards, validating that the stuff they do to address the risks works and watching where others fail. That’s part of what makes up a positive food safety culture.
A couple of years ago I started working with farmers’ market vendors and managers to bring these concepts to direct marketers in North Carolina – a growing group of clever food entrepreneurs who already had the benefit of being perceived as a safer place to buy shop than grocery stores (regardless of evidence). Being linked to poor practices or outbreaks blows the perception up, making the need to create and foster some sort of positive food safety culture to support the perception necessary.
While there’s a bunch wrong with some of the statements in this article (like the quest to answer “what is the best beef”) Gwendolyn Richards of the Calgary Herald gets to the idea of marketing food safety – and that part of that is food suppliers providing information on what they do.
The thing that did change (since XL – ben), says Vintage Group corporate chef Andrew Stevens — with the appropriate twitter handle of @thebeefgeek — is that more people were asking questions about where the beef was from and how it is handled in house.
“Once we give people the lowdown on where we source from, the relationships with the suppliers and processors and how we handle our beef, they’re OK with it,” he says.
And he encourages those sorts of questions, both in the restaurant and at grocery stores and butcher shops.
“You need to ask your butcher what’s going on,” he says.
Ask if the meat has been needled, ask where it comes from, ask if it has been cut in house.
“Whether you go to a farmers’ market or a big chain, we should be able to get that information.”
Industry, regulators and academia need to step up and help shape the questions consumers might want ask of their food sellers. And how to evaluate whether answers are decent.