Tag Archives: Doug Powell

Which country has the safest food in the world? No one knows

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America has the safest food supply in the world. True or False?

It’s impossible to say. The statistics don’t exist to make such a claim. But that doesn’t stop meatpackers, lobbyists, lawmakers and even government regulators who should know better, from repeating the claim every time there’s a food-borne illness outbreak or major food recall.

So says Philip Brasher, writing today in the Des Moines Register.

Brasher says unfounded claims can undermine the credibility of the government and the industry and he cites barfblog.com and our special safest-food-in-the-world section at http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/articles/safest-food-in-the-world/.

Kansas State University Professor Doug Powell wrote on a blog where he tracks food safety news,

"Bland blanket statements serve only to amplify rather than mollify consumers (concerns)."

Brasher goes on to say that the problem with making these claims is that it’s now impossible to compare one country’s statistics to another country’s, experts say. Most foodborne illnesses go unreported, so government agencies must come up with estimates of how many actually occur. How to do that varies.

Paul Frenzen, a demographer with the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research who specializes in food safety, said that even a factor that would seem relatively simple to measure, such as cases of food-related diarrhea, isn’t easy to track because definitions vary, and there are also cultural differences between countries as to when victims of foodborne illness go to the doctor.

Other countries offer universal health insurance, making it more likely that people will get to a doctor when they’re sick.

Brasher concludes that after the nation’s largest meat recall was announced earlier this year, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer didn’t claim that U.S. food is the world’s safest. Instead, he said,

"The United States enjoys one of the safest food supplies in the world."

No one is going to argue with that.

Knowing where your food comes from — Doug Powell edition

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Elizabeth Payne, a member of the Ottawa Citizen‘s editorial board, writes that the 100 Mile Diet looks great in the fall, but not so great during a long Ottawa winter.

A spate of recent scares about food — from tainted spinach and cantaloupe to sprouts and carrot juice — has made many consumers hyper-aware of the potential dangers of what they consume. For many, buying local seemed to offer protection against the evils of the food world.

A particularly harsh winter has put that myth to rest for many. Sooner or later, the grocery store and its shiny produce aisles full of strawberries, peppers, lettuce, oranges and kiwi beckon. Local, in this climate, has its limits.

Dr. Douglas Powell (right, not exactly as shown) says buying local is no guarantee against eating food that can make us sick.

"You have good producers and bad producers everywhere whether they are large or small, size doesn’t matter."

Powell said he feels safe buying produce from large grocery stores that are big enough to demand high standards throughout their supply chains. Even then, problems can happen. When it comes to buying local, he asks questions, such as what kind of water is used for irrigation, how often it is tested and where the produce is grown.

The story says that Powell (left, not exactly as shown) is a Canadian who teaches at the University of Kansas and heads the Guelph-based Food Safety Network.

I professorize at Kansas State University.

The International Food Safety Network is worldwide, headquartered on my couch in Manhattan (Kansas). If I’m heading some Guelph knock-off you’d think they could at least give me an e-mail address and not expropriate donations to cover shortfalls in their paper clip fund.

E-mailing Doug Powell? Don’t send it to Guelph

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Canadian journalists contact me regularly. This morning I was in Toronto’s Globe and Mail, offering sage words about food safety and travel.

"Take a look at the bathroom. You want to see soap, paper towels and lots of running water. If you don’t see those, you’ve got a problem, because those are the essentials for good hand washing."

Ok, not so sage, Boring

The journos — and many others — often contact me through my University of Guelph e-mail address.

Don’t.

I mean yes, contact me, I love the attention, but don’t go through Guelph.

In Feb. 2007, my previous institution, the University of Guelph, Canada, unilaterally decided not to continue a partnership with Kansas State, and eliminated access to my staff and funds that I had established in Guelph (about $750,000). An additional $135,000  the fine supporters of the Food Safety Network had provided to produce news has also magically disappeared.
 
And no one at Guelph will talk about it.

Now, the University of Guelph has frozen my e-mail account. They didn’t tell me, it just stopped working. So if you sent an e-mail to my Guelph account — and I was getting about 100 a day on that account — please resend to dpowell@ksu.edu. You won’t get an error message from the Guelph account, so you’ll just think I’m being aloof or something and not bothering to respond. You may think that anyway. When I inquired about what had happened, since an e-mail account is fairly standard for adjunct professors and alumni, I was eventually told, and this is a direct quote from an admin-type,

"Your name (was removed) from sponsored accounts as we could not think of any reason why you needed a UofG account."

Oh well. The hacks and posers can busy themselves with e-mail account access management. I have news and research to produce. In the 68 F sun. With my family. In Kansas.

And there are some big changes coming to the daily news. If you have any suggestions, please e-mail me, at Kansas State University, dpowell@ksu.edu.

Don’t eat poop.