are you reading? watching?

there are not enough people reading this blog. or the nytimes. or watching the news.

the nytimes reported today:

Just about everyone has heard about the recent recall of peanut products, but many Americans don’t realize that cakes, snack bars, brownies, cookies and ice cream may also be contaminated with salmonella, a Harvard University survey has found. Of the 93 percent of Americans in the survey who knew of recent recalls, fewer than half knew that some snack bars had been recalled, and fewer than half were aware cakes, brownies and cookies had been recalled.

i know that not everyone has the same obsession with food as i do. i do not really understand why people do not care what is in their food, but i know that they do not. but there was a salmonella outbreak, and people apparently have continued to eat products that might be tainted. what? why? it's like playing russian roulette. this is not choosing organic avocados over the "other" ones. this is an illness that can kill you.

so, in case you hadn't heard...

the peanut corporation of america is in trouble. and the fda does little. there was salmonella found in a variety of peanut products. the conditions at the plant are horrific:

Raw peanuts were stored next to the finished peanut butter. The roaster was not calibrated to kill deadly germs. Dispirited workers on minimum wage, supplied by temp agencies, donned their uniforms at home, potentially dragging contaminants into the plant, which also had rodents. The conditions at the plant, more circa 1955 than 2009, would have been enough to cause alarm in an industry where sanitation can be a matter of life and death, food experts said.

it gets worse.

But they were only one element in the salmonella outbreak and subsequent food safety train wreck that started here and swept through the country — claiming eight lives, sickening an estimated 19,000 people in 43 states and spurring an array of recalls, including TV dinners, snack bars labeled organic and ready-made meals for disaster relief. With children accounting for half of the salmonella illnesses traced to the Blakely plant — and a worldwide recall that now includes pails of peanut butter shipped to schools, military bases and nursing homes — the safety issues raised by the outbreak are drawing comparisons to those in China’s tainted milk scandal.

we have no real set of guidelines to protect us from continued similar problems.

so: the peanut corporation of america has filed for bankruptcy. this is a blow to the laborers, as this is no economy in which to look for work. hopefully, whichever company emerges to meet the demand for peanuts will be cleaner. but that's really just the beginning.