Today’s headlines were pretty depressing…local trees have been poisoned with herbicide, mostly likely by a human who thinks s/he deserves to see some water in a lake more than the trees deserve to have life. Then I read that the FDA has okayed irradiating spinach and lettuce to reduce bacterial outbreaks.

I’ve got to wonder if the bacterial outbreaks really couldn’t be controlled through better growing practices rather than adding another step to processing the food. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan illustrated that irradiating beef could be avoided by just feeding the cattle their natural diet briefly before slaughtering them. So, maybe by growing crops in a more natural environment they’d be stronger and able to withstand these infections? I’m not sure, and I do know that even home gardeners can cook up some nasty bugs…bacteria…fungi…etc…on their crops, but really people have been growing their own for as long as people have been cultivating food, and we’ve made it this long. Do we really need something applied at the end of the growing process to extend the shelf-life of our greens and make them look prettier? I have to wonder if the erradiation isn’t really just an easy-out to avoid changing what may be chemical-dependent growing practices.

I’m curious about the entire process and freely admit I don’t have all the answers…maybe that’s what scares me most. Each time humans start using another man-made/controlled process to control nature — whether to kill a tree in the name of a view or to mass produce the perfect-looking lettuce head — it seems we take one step further down the road in damaging our planet and ourselves.

As for me, this latest news is one more reason to get my little lettuce starts into the garden right away and my greenhouse (without erradiation equipment) cleaned up and ready to feed me this winter. And, it makes me just a little happier that I picked out a pair of tree-hugger winter boots yesterday. Oboz is committed to planting a tree for each pair purchased.  Perhaps my new shoes will help re-tree to mitigate others de-treeing.