Now they tell us!

The USDA has finished its exhaustive studies of Mexican tomatoes and found no evidence of salmonella. Too late, I think, to save this year’s crop.  Oh well, Sinaloa’s other major exports — marijuana and opium poppies, might bring in some needed cash.  You mean those aren’t the crops we should be exporting?

The problems have been bureaucratic and the scare seems media-driven to me.  I don’t play “blame the media”, but it seems as if the big news bureaus have just been taking what they’re told by the FDA — which seems to have no handle on the situation — and has been stirring up a lot of needless fear.

There’s no grand conspiracy, but U.S. policy (and bureaucratic ineptitude) seems designed to depopulate rural Mexico.  Between an inability to fashion a workable food policy (and the country’s over-dependence on a few corporate suppliers), Mexican farmers can’t compete.  If they turn to the crops that aren’t being driven off the market by the FDA and the USDA, they run up against the U.S. “war on drugs.”  The rural people can’t win… I guess they’ll have to emigrate.

Lawrence Iliff and Alfredo Corchado (Dallas Morning News) report in the Arizona Republic:

Overall, about 15 percent of the U.S. food supply and 60 percent of fresh fruits and vegetables consumed are imported, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

Mexico is the second-largest foreign source of agricultural products and seafood for the U.S., moving to No. 1 during the winter months and filling about 60 percent of the supermarket produce aisle. And it’s the worst offender when it comes to food shipments turned away at the border by U.S. inspectors, a review of food rejections shows.

In fairness to Mexico, U.S. food producers were the subject of far more expansive recalls last year than foreign producers, including recalls of California spinach that tested positive for E. coli and was blamed for three deaths, and of 22 million pounds of frozen beef hamburger patties, also because of a dangerous strain of that common bacteria.