Food Scare!

I just came across this article on Grist, that addresses some of the things I mentioned in my last post.

After a presidential election that was won in no small part thanks to the power of the Internet, it’s logical to assume political lobbying will also follow suit.  I think this bill, which according to the Grist article has little chance of passing, likely touched a nerve in the food processing industry who responded by spreading political nonsense all over the Internet from almost unknown sources in hopes of turning public opinion against it.

I think it’s important to learn a lesson from this.

I think it’s important for all of us to work within webs of trust, and if you read something really sensational on the Internet from a source you’re not familiar with and want to post about it, be sure to research the topic thoroughly first.  If you post regularly on the Internet, earn your readers trust by being careful about what you post about.  Most importantly, don’t present something as fact unless you’re pretty sure it’s true, and you’ve taken reasonable steps to verify it.  I know my record on this is not perfect, but I think it’s doubly important these days we all pay more attention to this issue.

4 Replies to “Food Scare!”

  1. To be fair Jeremy, I did publish this knowing the source was from a fairly well known book, and it is reasonable to assume it was not the intention of the author to lie or that there was any bad faith behind it.

    The quote had also been pretty widely circulated over a period of time and not particularly disputed.

    We have yet to also find a more accurate statistic of a similar nature.

    But yes, like we talked about before, it was not a very good citation…

  2. Hi Ron,

    Thanks for the comment. I understand your concern, and I would agree it’s far from a perfect bill. There’s little doubt more needs to be done to protect small farmers.

    What the bill is not going to do however, is ‘criminalize organic farming’ or any of the other wild suggestions going around the Internet right now.

    What the bill does promise to do is put thousands of food inspectors into the field, with real powers to shut down dangerous food operations. Certainly as applied to large scale operations, this is not at all a bad thing.

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