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Do you know where your food comes from? How many different countries has it been to? How many people handled it? And in what kinds of sanitary conditions?

Well, you should. Or at least have a means to know, if you care.

A well written article in the San Francisco Chronicle sheds some light on the dangers of our global food supply chain:

Almost a quarter of the average American’s food is imported. But increasingly, imports are from developing countries that do not meet U.S. standards regarding sanitation, worker safety, environmental practices, quality of ingredients and treatment of animals.

Ordinary Americans learned of the consequences of the gaping loopholes in the financial sector regulations. Yet few know that the government is also ill-equipped to manage the complex web of global food supply chains. This lack of transparency, coupled with a highly fragmented U.S. food safety infrastructure, enables unscrupulous suppliers…

…There are 12 federal agencies administering 35 different food safety laws. The Food and Drug Administration inspected only 52 Chinese plants from 1998 to 2005. At U.S. ports, only 1 percent of imported food is tested for biological contaminants…

Read the full article…

What you need to know:

Globalization has provided us with an amazing variety of foods, year round, and at very low prices. There is a lot of good work being done by many people across town, and across the planet, to get us safe food. Unfortunately, there will always be the few rotten apples, and a good international safety system needs to be in place to help protect consumers.

Our food safety authorities, as the article suggests, need a revamp. But a more immediate and less expensive measure is to mandate more transparency from the food industry. let consumers know the answers to the questions at the top of this post. Let them know where their steak came from, who are the subcontractors processing those shrimps overseas, and how many miles and days that kiwi has been on the road.

Ingredient lists and nutrition labels tell us what’s inside a package and help us compare products to choose the better one for us. Similarly, a “product history label” can help us decide to reward the brand that sourced its raw products close to home, organically, sustainably, safely, or all of the above.

With this transparency, consumers will be able to make choices based on criteria that are currently hidden from them. This will encourage the big US brands to earn our loyalty by showcasing why and how they are better and safer than their competitors. This will ultimately improve the safety standards of the entire food industry.

What to do at the supermarket:

Currently it is very hard to know the history of your food. With the exception of a few COOL labeled items, you won’t get too much information. Becoming more popular even at discount grocers, organic and local products sometimes include more information. Whole Foods and your local farmers market tend to provide a higher level of sourcing information than regular grocers.

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