In honor of Jon Stewart who said to call out bullshit when you smell it, I would like to alert you to a new op-ed article that appeared today, Friday January 15, 2016, under the Gray Matter rubric of the New York Times. In a few paragraphs of very convoluted prose, an economist in Minnesota claims the rapid expansion of farmers' markets across America has caused food borne illnesses to rise significantly. Then, weirdly, he uses another paragraph to negate and deny everything he just said.
His correlation factors seem to make no logical sense. They read like a calculated contortion aimed to produce a desired result: a stealth attack on those he labels educated, upper income farmers' market patrons--people who have been very publicly turning up their noses at industrially processed food, denting its bottom line.
In the lamest of lame conclusions, he says maybe all this is because customers don't think to wash what they bring home from the market. They trust their farmers to be squeaky clean because they're local and maybe even organic and don't mean to hurt anyone. He doesn't venture to say whether or not we regularly wash food that is continually being spritzed by fancy supermarket chains. But his implication is that supermarket food may be cleaner. He doesn't mention how even organic chickens sold there have to be dipped in arsenic for sanitary safety.
About a week ago, Dr. Marcia Angell retired as editor of the venerable New England Journal of Medicine, claiming it was no longer possible to trust any medical research since it was now all funded covertly or not by corporations with a very vested interest in getting wanted conclusions. So I brazenly wrote to the New York Times public editor asking if ConAgra or General Mills paid for this article whose headline and lead line seem carefully calculated to spread a panic that injures our local farmers in a stampede back to the industrial supermarket.
Jon Stewart may be gone, but he has not been forgotten.
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