Do You Know What’s on Your Dinner Plate?

If you do, then you’re well ahead of me.

The “pet food scare” started with certain wet pet foods; foods that I happen to feed to my cats. By luck or divine intervention my cats didn’t get sick despite eating some of the recalled foods. When the culprit was named as contaminated wheat gluten, my first thought was that human foods could be affected as well. Ok, my actual thought was that poisoning the pet food supply was just a test to see if the human food supply could be equally poisoned without notice. But the FDA assured us that the contaminated ingredient had only gone into the pet food industry and we are all a-ok.

And then we heard that some of the recalled food had been fed to hogs. (For those who are wondering, the companies didn’t take the tainted recalled food and sell it to hog farmers. Hog farmers buy the food that falls on the floor or spills from bags in shipping — the FDA won’t allow it to be sold as pet food, but it can be fed to the animals we eat) The FDA assured us that since the pet food is such a small part of their diet and hogs are such a small part of ours that we didn’t need to worry about the fact that the hogs who ate the food had already shown up on our supermarket shelves.

And then we heard that chickens had also been fed this very same food, and that most of them had already hit our supermarket shelves. But once again we were assured that there would be no harm to us because the food is a small part of chicken’s diet and chicken is but a portion of ours. Ok.

But now we hear that not only have farmed fish been fed with meal made from the contaminated “gluten” (which wasn’t gluten at all, it turns out), but fish imported from China have been testing positive for disallowed chemical additives (antibiotics and other things). But the food is a small part of a fish’s diet and fish is but a portion of ours. I personally can’t accept that assurance anymore because now I could be eating chicken, pork and fish that have all been contaminated with melamine. The only thing left in my diet (except for veggies) is beef. The FDA’s dilution theory doesn’t quite work any more.

I really would love to avoid all food that comes from China or is made from ingredients that originate in China. But that labeling isn’t required. I can’t find out where my fish came from; I can’t find out where my veggies came from. I picked up a bag of frozen corn the other day and it actually said “Packaged in China”. China doesn’t grow corn — so now we’re sending corn to China to be packed and sent back?!

I’m tired of E.coli in my spinach and onions. I’m tired of food recalled for contamination, so I’m taking back my dinner table.

From here on out, all of my meat comes from the local butcher who carries only local animals. Yes, I realize that the local farmers could have gotten their food from China, but at least my butcher knows which farm the steak came from if I ask. My fish will come from the local seafood shop, who can tell me where the fillet I pointed to came from. And I’m going to try to buy the veggies that my pitiful little garden doesn’t supply from the local farmers market.

Enough is enough.

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