The Government Shutdown Affects Not Just Us, But Our Food, Too
Even with a good number of the FDA's staff working again (for free).
In the morning of this past Tuesday, I found a piece of spinach with a big old lump of dirt on it. This has never happened before. Every Morning before school, I make my usual lunch of a salad, and finding a spinach leaf with dirt on it within my "triple washed spinach" container from Whole Foods caught my attention.
I wasn't super worried at first, though. I mean, it is just a bit of dirt and spinach is grown in dirt, so it only makes sense that I would find some eventually.
But the timing for this find— more specifically, during the government shutdown while the F.D.A. is not working at its full capacity and an e. Coli outbreak among other leafy green salad base is still in recent memory— is poor.
The more I considered the dirt, the more I wondered if it was the beginning of the decline in quality of vegetables in this endless-seeming shutdown. Although many workers for the F.D.A. were called in by the agency's commissioner in order to "prevent potential outbreaks of foodborne illnesses," it's a smaller percentage of the usual staff and they are unpaid— leaving room for mistakes. When the e.coli outbreaks of romaine took place a couple of months ago, I, nor anyone I knew, got sick; but the possibility still remains in this strenuous time where an unpaid, significantly smaller staff is standing between us and possible contamination.
In a period of American history where the President serves guests to the White House cheap fast food on silver platters and supermarkets are non-existent in low-income areas— I am led to fear the worst in the evolution of the modern American diet and its direction as the safety of vegetables are put into question.
