Not so total recall

It looks like Taylor Farms is making a voluntary recall of who knows how many thousands of pounds of organic baby spinach in 35 states.  As opposed to the usual kabuki dance performed in most recalls where the produce has already been sold and consumed, this time, most of the produce has barely reached the store shelves or is still sitting in distribution centers.  Taylor will have to bear most of the cost, not only for the spinach, but all the costs associated with physically gathering the product and destroying it.   Of course they have insurance for such eventualities, but to voluntarily recall such an enormous amount of product must mean there was more than a negligible chance someone would have gotten sick or died as a result of eating the spinach.  That we have this spectacle repeated for produce and meat on a daily basis in at least some area of the country speaks volumes about the need for more food safety inspectors.  Beyond this obvious point, there are other forces at work which will continue to exacerbate this problem.   When veg processing and packing was in its infancy, spinach and other greens were hand-packed in garages and makeshift plants.  There was very little sanitation practiced and cooling was hit and miss.  However, the farmers who supplied these greens were mostly small growers who as often as not were eating the spinach they harvested.  Today, most greens and indeed most produce is grown on huge corporate farms by workers who may or may not care about eating what they grow.  We force them to take training to avoid contaminating produce, but I think that is somewhat akin to complaining about food in a restaurant.  It probably provokes as many problems as it solves.  My point is the modern produce industry is divorced from the individual's pride and responsibility and this is one of the drivers of our ever more compromised food delivery system.