I’m pleased to offer the following guest post (the first of two or three) from author and farmer Ben Hewitt of Cabot, Vermont. Ben released his first book, The Town That Food Saved, in early 2010, telling the story of a working-class Vermont community that became a national model for building a localized food system. We’re eagerly awaiting his upcoming book on food safety which, in his words, is “probably not the food safety book folks are expecting.”

In August 2009, after writing a story about food safety for Eating Well magazine, I received a contract to write a book about the subject. It will be published by Rodale in June, and is called Making Supper Safe.

When I first proposed the book, I assumed it would be a fairly straightforward piece of journalism about the rise of pathogenic bacteria in our food and what we should do about it. Now, after 18 months of research and writing, I can laugh at my naïveté. Or chuckle, at least.

Indeed, it didn’t take long for me to decide that our nation’s conversation about food safety, which is focused almost exclusively on the issue of pathogenic bacteria (E coli O157:H7, Salmonella, Listeria, et al) is myopic in the extreme and only serves to distract us from the far greater dangers perpetrated by our industrialized food system.

My first clue came when I began researching the statistics around death and illness attributed to foodborne agents (primarily bacteria, although occasionally parasites). It is often stated that foodborne illness kills more than 5,000 Americans annually, sends another 325,000 to the hospital, and provides a whopping 76 million of us an unwelcome opportunity to become overly familiar with the view from our toilet. It is less often stated that the 1999 study providing these numbers ends with a line that reads “unknown agents account for approximately 81 percent of foodborne illnesses and hospitalizations and 64 percent of deaths.” In other words, a significant majority of assumed illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths are just that: Assumed. The numbers are merely extrapolated from estimates of all deaths by gastroenteritis of unknown cause. Indeed, the extrapolation accounts for 3,400 of the total study estimate of 5,194 deaths annually.

Now, this doesn’t mean there is no foodborne illness; it doesn’t even necessarily mean there is less (although it’s worth noting that in 2009 there were “only” 500 confirmed deaths relating to foodborne agents. And it is rumored that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is prepared to release revised numbers, which will be significantly lower than those of the 1999 study). But it does suggest that our national conversation and response to the issue is being informed by data that are, at best, a very rough estimate. And at worst, a wild guess.

It also didn’t take me long to begin considering the ways in which our food causes death and disease outside the realm of contaminants, and that these issues are, broadly speaking, totally absent from the conversation surrounding food safety. Should we not consider the 300,000 Americans who die each year of obesity-related disease to be victims of unsafe food? True, not every one of these deaths—nor every bit of incalculable suffering that accompanies the condition—can be attributed to food. Still, I know of no one who would argue that a significant percentage of obesity-related mortality and disease, which has doubled over the past few decades, is not a direct result of the way we feed our nation.

Less obvious is the tragic rise in drug-resistant bacteria, responsible for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of deaths annually, some of which can be attributed to the practice of feeding sub-clinical doses of antibiotics to livestock (75 percent of the antibiotics sold in this country are fed to livestock). Our nation’s meat production facilities have become breeding grounds not only for animals but also for the resistance genes that can insert themselves into bacteria that commonly infect humans, rendering antibiotics useless. Recently, there has been fascinating (and utterly frightening) research conducted on the communities surrounding these facilities. It shows that in some cases, literally 100 percent of the residents of these communities are populated with bacteria from the production facility. This does not mean they will get sick or die, but it does mean that the genes in that the bacteria are provided with an almost ideal opportunity to develop resistance to human antibiotics.

Our medical community understands the problem; indeed, it has made strategic decisions to end the practice of treating certain groups of patients with prophylactic doses of antibiotics, even when doing so has been shown to save lives. Why? Because they recognize the greater danger of unleashing drug-resistant disease into the wider population. And yet we continue the practice of feeding antibiotics to our livestock, not to save lives, mind you, but so they might grow a handful of percent larger by slaughter time.

Again, my point is not that there is no illness or death by foodborne contaminants, only that it comprises a very small fraction of the total human cost of our industrialized food system. And that our collective response to the issue, which I would characterize as one of fear, distrust, and helplessness, is likely to only perpetuate the problem.

More on that later.

Visit Ben Hewitt’s website for more information on him, his writing and where to hear him speak. If you haven’t yet read The Town That Food Saved, read about it on Nourishing Words and find yourself a copy soon!