SHHHHHHHHHHHH..... [View All]

So I just got back from visiting a friend of mine at the hospital (they suffered "mild" food poisoning). It seems he, his wife, and their 5 year old son all got sick about 2 hours after finishing breakfast this morning. They ate eggs and toast.

Kat (my friend's wife) told me she thinks it was the eggs that made them all sick. I asked her why she thought this. She told me that according to the date stamped on the carton, the eggs had expired about 5 days ago, but she used them anyway because they're...eggs.

Back in the 1970's, Congress passed some consumer protection laws (sorry I don't have references, this is from memory) concerning "wear engineering." It seems big companies like Whirlpool and GE were purposely designing their products to fail after a certain number of uses. This "wear engineering" was costing Americans billions, since the durable goods they were buying (like washers, ovens, and water heaters) had parts that strategically wore out long before the rest of the machines, thereby causing the consumer to have to replace the entire machine. The corporations sold more machines, and that was what mattered to them. Congress put a stop to it, supposedly.

Now comes my wife's uncle, who sold his egg farm to a big co-op a few years back, while retaining the right to work the farm himself. The co-op sold his farm about a year ago, and he has the same deal with the new owners as he had with the co-op. Well, I remember him complaining last Christmas that the new owners had forced him to change his feed. He said the new feed upset the chickens, causing some of them to stop eating to the point of death. He'd never seen the like before. When he complained to the corporation, they told him this was the feed he had to use, or else he would lose his job. So he continued using the feed, and to my knowledge, uses it still.

Do you see where I am going with this?

Are big food producers "wear engineering" our food? Used to be eggs did not have an expiration date on them - you used them until they were gone, and they didn't spoil.

Used to be lots of products didn't expire - but now they do. I've eaten plenty of dry goods after they expire - they are a bit stale, but still nourishing.

But dairy and meat all seem to go bad much faster, and much more spectacularly, than they used to.

So how much food is being wasted for the sake of profit? How much "wear engineering" is going into our food supply? And what are the long term health and environmental effects, if this is indeed happening? Biotechnology certainly exists that could spoil our food on purpose after a certain amount of time...

No one is talking about this, in government, in the media, or in the private sector. I asked the manager of the grocery store (Krogers) today why eggs have expiration dates on them. He said to keep consumers safe from spoiled eggs. I asked him if he remembered when eggs did not have expiration dates on them, he answered that he did. I asked him why people didn't used to get sick eating "old" eggs, and he said he didn't know, and could no longer speak to me on the subject as he had to get back to work. I asked him if he remembered eggs going bad on customers prior to expiration dates being applied, and he just shrugged and walked away.

Maybe I'm paranoid, I don't know. But after the swine flue scare this month, the condition of the pig farm that is responsible, and the sorry state of corporate responsibility, I have to wonder what the hell is going on...and how safe our food truly is...