I don’t like counting outbreak tolls or square mileage affected – in the absence of meaningful information – because it seems like accounting, and I have an accountant to do that.

Numbers numb and go past the story: Stalin said, “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”

None of us wants to be a statistic.

Whether it’s E. coli in Romaine lettuce in the U.S. or Listeria in rockmelon in Australia, producer groups have failed the farmers they are supposed to represent.

Step up. It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.