For the past several months we’ve been seeing all kinds of E. Coli outbreaks in food that we buy in the supermarket or have served to us in restaurants. This week, Taco Bell closed a bunch of outlets when it was found that the green onions supplied to the restaurants were tainted with E. Coli bacteria.
The Escherichia Coliform bacteria is an intestinal flora that normally occurs and shows up in mammalian feces. As humans are mammals and we shit, guess what? This is why your Mom, the School Nurse and a bunch of other people have been saying "Wash you hands" after using the bathroom. Simple washing with soap and water removes much of the bacteria from your hands. The usual symptoms of E.Coli infection are vomiting, diarrhea, fever and on through septicemia and death, depending on the initial health and age of the patient.
You can kill E. Coli by heating it, or by washing, or flushing it with various anti-bacterial solutions. Alcohol, Betadine and even vinegar will work. This is why the Food Safety folks strongly recommend cooking meat to medium or well done. Heat or cold kills Salmonella too, a happy coincidence there. However, for food eaten raw, like spinach, green onions, carrots or lettuce, heating is not an option.
So why are people getting sick with E. Coli? Here’s the problem: We rely on the farmer or packer or wholesaler to ensure the food is well-washed and protected from contamination until it gets to the restaurant or supermarket. We expect the produce clerk to have basic hygiene when they load the lettuces into the display at Loblaws. We expect the person who prepares out spinach salad to have at least a lick of sense in the back of the restaurant. It would seem that we were wrong.
Like some problems in our society, this one has an economic root. The root is deep and you have to understand how things you eat get in front of your face, so you can eat them. This will take a moment, as our modern life is complicated.
The company growing the spinach or green onions makes very little money growing or harvesting the product. Therefore every fraction of a cent saved in producing a pound of food, times a few thousand pounds, means a few dollars extra profit for the grower at the end of the day, perhaps squeezing an extra $10 out of $10,000.
To squeeze out that $10, hiring off-the-books labour at less than minimum wage is common in the agricultural business. Paying piecework wages means the picker is not interested in anything that detracts from picking 10 pounds of whatever, as fast as possible to earn that 41 cents they might get paid for picking 10 pounds of green onions.
The grower looks at production. Washing the product costs money for the water and the equipment to thoroughly wash it, as well as the people to do it. Confronted with a wholesaler who dictates the price paid, the grower has to cut enough corners to make a whole extra square.
The wholesaler knows that the middleman or broker demands delivery at a certain price. Produce shippers have to move the goods rapidly by truck, so the trucker has to work extra hours, on razor thin profit margins, to deliver to the terminal.
The food prep company or central commissary hires at as low a wage as they can get away with, to chop the green onions and bag them up for shipment to the restaurant. The restaurant hires as cheaply as possible to have someone open the bag of chopped green onions and put it in the salad bar or in the prep area.
At each step, from field to the top of your taco, someone is making a little bit of money (sometime a very little bit of money) each step trusting the other one that they have done their job properly. With that kind of economic pressure, the rewards of cutting corners are too great everywhere along the line.
So, to eke out another cent or two the grower doesn’t wash the produce with clean water. He uses field water from a well and a fire hose. The wholesaler demands the grower deliver at a certain date and time or risk never getting another order. The wholesaler also bitches about the amount of water in the boxes, as water has weight, so he cuts the price per pound he pays the grower to account for excess water.
The wholesaler leans on the shipper to shave a nickel off the price per pound of shipping, so the shipper has to use a cheaper, less reliable company that doesn’t always do the maintenance on their rigs and routinely makes their people drive overtime. The driver is getting paid by the mile, so he avoids the weigh stations and routinely runs faster than the speed limit, dodging the cops.
The dock master at the terminal gets a kickback from each trucker so his truck gets unloaded earlier, rather than waiting around, not earning mile money. The dock master has to get the boxes off a truck and onto another one faster, as the terminal owner has promised the green onions will be fresh and still refrigerated when they get to the food prep company.
However the wholesaler shipped less than perfect produce last time, so the food prep company is going to lean on the terminal manager to deliver faster and better quality, to make up for it, or get their next four shipments refused for quality reasons. The terminal manager will lose money, which means those boxes of green onions move fast across that loading dock.
Naturally the contract from the food prep company to the restaurant chain is based on supplying 350 restaurants at a skinny margin per bag. They hire cheap labour to chop and bag the green onions as fast as possible. As long as they make their delivery and there are no fingers or thumbs in the green onions, they get paid.
The restaurant is set up for just in time delivery. The bag of green onions has to be delivered by 9 am to be ready to be out for 11 am. The restaurant doesn’t have room for a big fridge to store a couple of days’ supplies in the kitchen. The whole store has been designed for maximum revenue per square foot: A bigger fridge does not generate revenue. The franchisee has been promised a certain revenue can be made as long as they buy their supplies from the central prep company, under contract to the company.
The restaurant doesn’t actually have chefs and cooks. They hire assemblers for less than a chef would cost. Everything is prepared in advance, off site, so all that is really done is ladling out the components in the right order. As long as the truck shows up in time and someone can figure out how to open the plastic bag, it all comes together as a meat-related taco with green onions on top.
Cost to you for that half-teaspoon of diced green onion on the top of your lunch? Perhaps 2 cents at the most.
This chain of supply is based on literally hundreds of interdependent contractors and companies all along the line, each trying to cut costs to improve profitability. There is nothing wrong with a company making a buck. Try telling that to someone who has just spent the last three days on the toilet spewing from both ends because they got sick.
One thought is for all of us to pay a little more for a safer food supply. Let’s say, using our green onions at 99 cents for three bunches (Dominion store at Mississauga Valley Drive, today’s price) that we, as consumers, all agree we’ll pay an extra dime for the green onions so we can feel confident they’re not contaminated.
Of that dime per half-pound of product, how much do you think would actually get back to the grower? If you said nothing, you would be right. It might even cost the grower money. The wholesaler would have to certify the grower, which costs the wholesaler money, so they can’t pay as much, which means they have to mark up the price to the shipper.
The shipper won’t absorb the cost, so their cost to the terminal goes up but the prep company is on a fixed price contract for two years, so they have to either lean on the terminal, or get another source of supply, or lay off a half-dozen people or pay even less per hour, which means hiring off-the-books labour.
Meanwhile the restaurant franchisee is looking at increased costs for green onions from the head office, as the head office sets the price and you don’t have a choice. That cuts into profits and means the franchisee isn’t making enough to keep up on his financing obligations. He has to lay off two "cooks" as he can’t change the prices, as that is controlled by head office. Or cut breaks for his now short staff to keep up with demand, which means leaving out one cleaning shift per week and not telling the company he’s doing it.
Odds are the paperwork alone to certify the green onions are safe would consume the entire dime we’d willingly pay for some kind of guarantee we’re not eating bacteria-laden food.
What it comes down to, truly, is everyone wants to make more money. Nobody can afford to do what is right.
RoadDave 