How did salmonella end up in chia in the first place? That’s a long, mysterious story, likely involving contamination from water sources, raw compost, farm workers, or animals. The culprit behind the bad chia isn’t clear, but one thing is: More and more infectious bacteria are showing up in fresh produce, nuts, and seeds, even when they’re organic or processed into packaged foods. In fact, some of the biggest food recalls of recent memory have been issued against items usually eaten raw. Take, for example: • January 2014: 15,800 pounds of fresh tomatoes recalled due to salmonella • April 2014: organic black peppercorns sold in all 50 states recalled due to salmonella • May–July 2014: four recalls of sprouted chia seed products potentially infected with salmonella • July 2014: peaches, plums, pluots, and nectarines distributed nationwide by California’s Wawona Packing Co. recalled due to listeria • August 2014: six popular brands of natural peanut and almond butter recalled due to salmonella • March 2015: Trader Joe’s, Wegmans, and Aurora Products recall organic raw walnuts and trail mixes due to threat of salmonella• April 2015: Sabra recalls 30,000 cases of hummus due to listeria contamination “For a long time, we didn’t think of produce as an area of foodborne illness,” says Chris Waldrop, director of the Consumer Federation of America’s Food Policy Institute. “We’ve definitely been seeing a lot more recalls linked to fresh produce over the past several years, since the big E. coli breakout linked to spinach in 2006.” MORE: Is Your Spice Rack Making You Sick? Recalls of this kind can surprise consumers, too. Most of us don’t buy products like peaches or GreenSmoothieGirl Sprouted TriOmega Superfood expecting that they’ll relegate us to the bathroom for half a week. Aren’t these the kinds of foods we run to in order to avoid foodborne illness? What’s going on? The answer, as ever, is complicated. Various experts attribute the problem to increases in food imports, heightened produce consumption, better outbreak traceability, lax food-safety law, and devil-may-care industrial farming practices. But the rise in big recalls also has a lot to do with agricultural trends. First, consider the American farm: The latest data from the US Agricultural Census show that the number of farms is decreasing, but the size of those farms is increasing. The bigger the farm, generally, the greater its distribution. Next, think of bacteria—or, rather, the fact that bacteria don’t discriminate. “Pathogens don’t really care about the size of the farm,” Waldrop says. Traditional contaminants can just as easily strike the 5-acre organic potato farm and the 500-acre genetically modified corn operation. “The difference is in terms of how many people the farmer is selling to,” he says. This means that a single contaminated crop from a farm with nationwide distribution will cause outbreaks in many states. A contaminated crop from the farm down the road won’t get as many people sick—and it won’t capture the FDA’s attention. In other words: Big farms aren’t necessarily more dangerous, but they do make more people sick. And as long as there are big farms, there will be big food recalls. So how can you protect yourself? Chances are, you don’t have to: The CDC estimates that one in six Americans experiences food poisoning every year, but only 0.26% of those cases are serious enough to require hospitalization. If you’re worried about contamination, cook produce, toast raw nuts, and work those chia seeds into breads, muffins, or other foods that bake in a hot oven. You can also find more safe food practices here. And there is good news. The FDA is at work on a long-overdue revision of US food safety policy, for one, and the general number of recalls has been on the decline. In 2009, consumers got walloped with a staggering 3,241 recalls. In 2014, there were only about 460. Stay updated on this year’s tally with the FDA and USDA. And—for us—just cook the damn tomatoes every once in a while.
