Should we just quit eating?

published October 6, 2011

in the Stockton Sentinel

Stockton, Kansas

            Several mornings ago, I was multi-tasking as usual, eating breakfast, listening to “Good Morning, America” and reading the Salina Journal. The morning’s news on the ABC channel included a story about another death from listeria, caused by eating cantaloupe that was believed to have been grown on a farm in Colorado. This update was immediately followed by a story regarding the presence of arsenic in apple juice.

            With a bowl of cantaloupe and a glass of apple juice sitting in front of me, I wasn’t sure continuing with my breakfast was the smartest thing to do. For a moment, I nearly lost my appetite.

            Since then, I’ve heard and read more about cantaloupe, one of my favorite summer fruits. By now, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recalled some 300,000 cases of cantaloupe grown from this particular farm outside of Holly, Colorado, a town of 800 people located near the Kansas-Colorado border. But now it has been revealed that this is only one of at least 19 other illness-related outbreaks caused by cantaloupe since 1984. Do you recall hearing about the other 18 health-related issues? I certainly don’t.

            But this is the first cantaloupe issue caused by listeria, a germ that actually likes to be in the refrigerator and thrives in this particular fruit. Listeria has also prompted the recall last week of bags of chopped romaine lettuce due to possible contamination, although no illnesses have been reported.

            So what are we to do… quit eating? Obviously that might cause other problems, and I don’t like that answer at all. But even though the FDA and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) haven’t come right out and said we should stop eating cantaloupe, there are other health experts who say, that at least until this thing has been resolved, we should not eat it, especially if you don’t know where it comes from.

            It seems like there’s always something in the news about food safety. I’m not saying the current issue with listeria shouldn’t be taken seriously, but perhaps we all need to carry a pocket-sized microbe-o-meter to test everything before we take our next bite or next sip. Maybe that’s coming soon, and the government will require everyone to have one.

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy eating too much to spend much time worrying about it. I refuse to live in fear, but I do hope they don’t come up with a cookie jar bacteria or a virus that thrives on the inside of an ice cream container. Now that would be serious!