Spring has sprung in Kansas. We all worked in the yard yesterday, and after a couple of cool nights later in the week, the first leafy greens will be going into the garden.

With spring comes the mantra, local is safer.

The idea food that is grown and consumed locally is somehow safer than other food, either because it contacts fewer hands or any outbreaks would be contained, is sorta soothing, like a mild hallucinogen, and has absolutely no basis in reality.

Foodborne illness is vastly underreported — it’s known as the burden of reporting foodborne illness. Someone has to get sick enough to go to a doctor, go to a doctor that is bright enough to order the right test, live in a state that has the known foodborne illnesses as a reportable disease, and then it gets registered by the feds. For every known case of foodborne illness, there are 10 -300 other cases, depending on the severity of the bug.

Most foodborne illness is never detected. It’s almost never the last meal someone ate, or whatever other mythologies are out there. A stool sample linked with some epidemiology or food testing is required to make associations with specific foods.

Robert Brackett, senior vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and a darn fine scientist, told USA Today most foodborne illnesses don’t get noticed because not enough people get sick to alert officials that an outbreak is underway. Undetected outbreaks are more likely with "local" products delivered in small quantities and sold in a small area.

Comparing local with all that other food brings in more tenuous links and numerous erroneous assumptions. To accurately compare local and other food, a database would have to somehow be constructed so that a comparison of illnesses on a per capita meal or even ingredient basis could be made.

But the absence of data doesn’t stop doctrine. JoLynn Montgomery, director of the Michigan Center for Public Health Preparedness at the University of Michigan told the Detroit Free Press today that one solution that is catching on is buying locally grown foods.

"The less distance the food has to travel, the fewer people who touch the food, the less risk you have.”

Local can be microbiologically safe. But repeating ‘local’ while in some sorta peyote buzz doesn’t take care of the dangerous bugs. So wherever food is purchased or even grown, ask some questions:

• how are pathogenic microorganisms managed;
• is wash and irrigation water tested for dangerous bacteria;

• how is fresh produce protected from animal poop;
• what kind of soil amendments are being used and are they microbiologically safe; and,
• are you or your suppliers practicing great handwashing?

That’s a start.