Farming Safety and Production :: Food Safety

Over a hundred years ago the idea of farming and food consumption was very different then it is today. Regulation, education about health, research and technology, food processing, marketing, and wholesale has changed the food industry and the agriculture itself. Before going to the market or grocery store meant going to your back yard where you knew where everything was being grown and how it was being taken care of. Nowadays the majority of people do not raise their own animals or grow their own vegetables they go to a big chain or even a smaller local store to buy their food. When it comes to food safely and food production large farms and small farms are being negatively affected in many different areas. The current issues dealing with food safely and food production are, because there are a few big plants running are production of food its causing nation wide food poisoning and contamination, the public wants more regulation and centralized on farms which is then putting financ ial pressure on local farms, feedlots for animals, and our food is subject to terrorist attacks because only more then half our nations food is produced in the same place. I believe the way to fix our problem is to be informed and get involved. One of the main issues facing farming safety and production today is the fact that a few big plants are producing the mass majority of our food. Because our food is being produced, cleaned and handled in one place its causing nation wide poisoning and contamination of our meats and vegetables. For example, four companies produce eighty percent of Americans beef and one company produces thirty percent of our milk. (p.388) This means when an outbreak occurs it’s harder to re-call all of the produced because most stores all over the nation are selling the food. It also means that more people are going to be affected and become ill. If a local store were to sell bad spinach to five costumers in a small town its easier to control, manage, trace and inform those customers instead of have a large amount of people getting ill. Two hundred Americans in 26 states were sickened by spinach that had E. Coli. (p.388) The Center Disease Control for and Prevention approximation that our food supplies sickens 76 million, putting more than 300, 000 in the hospital and killing 5,000 Americans every year.