Organic Farming Methods Continue to Kill
Of all the stupid diseases you can catch, listeria from a cantaloupe is got to be one of the toughest. Listeria is a bacteria that is transmitted by infected animals like mice, but the bacteria is easy to kill with a pasteurization process or, in the case of meats, by cooking. You can’t cook or pasteurize a cantaloupe. But you can keep pests away, wash the fruit with anti-bacterial wash at the time of packing, or even use radiation to kill the bacteria. Unless of course, you believe in organic farming, and then you will do none of these and people will die. Then you, as an organic farming company, put out a blog post to say sorry.
From the IBTimes here:
A Colorado Springs couple is the first to file a lawsuit in against Jensen Farms on Thursday claiming that the cantaloupe that they ate tested positive for listeria.
Tammie Palmer filed the suit after her 71-year-old husband Charles Palmer, a retired Marine sergeant, got sick from eating a contaminated melon on August 31. He’s been hospitalized ever since.
Doctors have diagnosed Charles Palmer with listeriosis, which is caused by Listeria monocytogenes bacteria. This is the same strain that’s been linked an outbreak that has reportedly led to two deaths and sickened 22 people in seven states as of Sept. 14.
On Thursday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a statement warning consumers not to eat Rocky Ford cantaloupe shipped by Jensen Farms. The federal agency also urged people to throw away recalled product that may still be in their home.
So we know that Jensen refused to use pesticides on their fruit. Did they also refuse to keep the mice and rats away by using poison? Did they have a method to wash the fruit before shipping? You can bet they don’t use radiation to kill germs and bacteria.
Remember, if you see Organic on the label, treat it like the surgeon general’s warning on cigarettes. It should say to you that the farming methods used shortcuts that make the product less safe for consumption. Organic certainly doesn’t mean the product is better you you.
