It has been depressing, following the tainted spinach news; if I see one more cartoon about kids saying "take me to McDonald's, it is safer" I will retch. In Sunday's New York Times, Michael Pollan dissects the issue with the skill of a surgeon. He points out that we do not need to get our spinach in a sealed bag shipped across the continent, but that we can look our farmer in the eye and learn to trust the source of our food. That e.coli contamination is not a fact of life that needs hi-tech radiation and bleach but a byproduct of industrial agriculture and feedlot farming of cows. That centralized food production is a dangerously precarious system vulnerable to accidental-and deliberate- contamination. If there was ever a reason to eat local, this is it. ::New York Times

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