The Delusion of Control

Diana Stuart’s “The Illusion of Control: industrialized agriculture, nature, and food safety” argues that industrializing agriculture has lead to a pandemic of food borne diseases. She explains that companies have become manufacturing giants with the goal in mind to optimize benefits at any cost to society. However, she believes that it is impossible to retain the control needed on food and continue at the enormous level of production we operate at in the United States. This high-volume production has lead to numerous breakouts of E. coli O157:H7 in items such as leafy greens, peanut butter, and beef. Usually caused by contamination from feces of nearby animals, companies do little to test meat before processes and dilute the bacteria to undetectable amounts- but it is still there.

She describes something called the “boomerang effect” in which “nature can evade and complicate attempted manipulation…[but] technological innovations can lead to greater problems than they set out to fix.” (180) This means that no matter how much humans try to create ways of protecting food from contamination, the disease will change to accommodate its environment. Especially in our system where a few contaminated leaves can affect thousands of packages, we are incredibly vulnerable to fatal illnesses. Stuart then moves on to the consumer and asserts that we have the illusion of control over our food and trust that manufacturers make the best decisions with our health in mind when, in fact, it is the complete opposite. Until companies quit their profit-maximizing techniques, society will be subject to harm in the form of the sustenance we need to survive.

Would people tolerate the risk they are taking in eating certain foods if they knew how prevalent lethal bacteria were in their daily diet?
Should the government regulate more testing in food, even at the cost of small producers?