The TCS daily (Technology Commerce Society) has an interesting article on making our food safer:

Americans are wondering who will protect us from future outbreaks of contamination and food-borne illness.

First, it’s clear we can’t rely on growers of fresh produce to protect us 100 percent of the time. Modern farming operations – especially the larger ones — already employ strict standards and safeguards designed to keep food free of pathogens. And most often they work: Americans’ food is not only the least expensive, but also the safest, in the history of humankind.

However, there is a limit to how safe we can make agriculture, given that it is an outdoor activity and subject to all manner of unpredictable challenges. If the goal is to make a field 100 percent safe from contamination, the only solution that guarantees this is to pave it over and build a parking lot on it. But we’d only be trading very rare agricultural mishaps for fender-benders.