It’s not that a grocery mogul told a supposed food safety conference that “one day, (farmers’ markets) are going to kill somebody;” it’s that no one in the farmer’s market community responded with any kind of microbiological food safety comment, resorting instead to, trust us and we’re inspected.

The Toronto Star reports mega-billionaire Galen-hey-now-Weston (right, exactly as shown), head of Canadian mega-grocer Loblaws, with over 1,000 stores, told the Canadian Food Summit yesterday, "Farmers' markets are great … One day they're going to kill some people, though. I'm just saying that to be dramatic, though.”

Robert Chorney, the executive director of Farmers' Markets Ontario, responded, "We strenuously object" to Weston's remark. That was awful."

Ontario's 175 farmers' markets do more than $700 million in sales every year. Chorney promoted a few food safety myths of his own, saying that markets are regularly inspected and food is easily traceable because consumers know who they're buying from.

Inspections don’t mean much. And just because someone drives to the Food Terminal in Toronto to load up on produce at 3 a.m. and then sell it at a premium at the local market adds nothing to traceability.

“The association said that four surveys since 1998 have shown that 83 per cent of respondents feel market food is as safe or safer than supermarket food.”

Surveys suck; people’s perceptions often have no basis in reality.

"A question for Galen Weston Jr: Have you ever been to a farmers' market?" tweeted Gail Gordon Oliver, publisher and editor of Edible Toronto. "Have you ever REALLY spoken to a farmer?"

I have. And I ask questions. Like quality of irrigation water, what kind of shit soil amendments are used, and employee handwashing programs. I ask about microbial test strategies and results as verification that the farmer, whether she bought it from the Food Terminal or grew it herself, has a clue about dangerous microorganisms. Most answer with variations of, trust me.

There’s already enough faith-based food safety out there.

“Some delegates whispered among themselves on coffee breaks that supermarkets sell most of the food that's recalled by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).”

That's because supermarkets sell most of the food that is consumed in Canada.

“Farmers' Markets Ontario works with Ontario's 36 public health units, each of which has a champion responsible for markets. It has a food safety manual on its website.”

A manual? Awesome, my faith is restored.

I don’t care if it’s a farmer’s market or the Loblaws megalomart: provide evidence that the food you’re flogging is microbiologically safe. The best producers and retailers will market food safety at retail. People want it, that’s one reason they go to markets and buy all sorts of weird categories of food, but it’s not safer; it’s hucksterism.

And being a big company like Maple Leaf of 2008 listeria-in-cold-cuts fame that killed 23 Canadians is no guarantee or even hint that microbiological food safety matters. Regardless of size, or production method, or retail experience, providers either know about microbial food safety risks and take serious steps to control those risks – or they don’t.

In the 1990s as outbreaks were increasingly associated with unpasteurized apple cider, I would ask my cider provider at the Guelph local market (that’s in Canada) what he was doing to ensure the microbiological safety of his product. He could recite a variety of measures taken on the farm, and even set up a modest micro lab on the farm for testing. I bought his cider.

Fresh tomato supply chain leaders are – in 2012? -- sharpening food safety programs and auditing protocols with a goal of cutting foodborne illnesses linked to their product.

So says The Packer, but shouldn’t that have been done about 15 years ago as evidence accumulated that tomatoes were a frequent culprit in outbreaks of foodborne illness?

As Florida, California and other tomato types met in early Feb., audit fatigue, or numerous audits grower-shippers’ customers often require, remained central in discussions.

“How many standards can you audit to?” asked Billy Heller, chief executive officer of Pacific Tomato Growers Ltd., Palmetto. “Audit fatigue within our group at all levels is unbelievable. We have customers coming behind other customers checking the other audits because they each have their own specs.

Ed Beckman, president of the Certified Greenhouse Vegetable Producers Association of North America, Fresno, Calif., said the debate should be about how tomato food safety metrics reflect science. Beckman, until recently president of Fresno, Calif.-based California Tomato Growers, said the industry seeks collaboration with the FDA and the U.S, Department of Agriculture throughout the audit process.

“This is not growers and customers sitting in a room and defining what our future is,” Beckman said. “We don’t simply pull a number out of the air and throw it in that document and say it’s good.

“... This about bringing people together, sharing ideas, sharing our frustrations with existing audits, auditing and trying to come back with a solution that meets everyone’s needs in a single audit that is based on science.”

During the meetings, growers and buyers discussed customer expectations, additions to the standards and issues such as commingling at repacking operations.

A table of older, fresh tomato-related outbreaks is available at http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=32&sc=419&id=953.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is asking a federal court to prevent a New York cheese manufacturer from operating because of a history of unsanitary conditions and producing cheese in a facility contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

According to a complaint for permanent injunction filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Mexicali Cheese of Woodhaven, N.Y., and two of its officers, Edinson Vergara and Claudia Marin, produced cheese under persistent unsanitary conditions that contributed to widespread Listeria contamination in Mexicali Cheese's facility.

In addition, the complaint, filed January 30 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, says that the New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets, Division of Milk Control and Dairy Services found similar unsanitary conditions in addition to product contamination.

Inspections over the last three years, which were set off by the finding of staphylococcal bacteria in a cheese sample in 2009, have turned up a long list of violations, including equipment that was covered in harmful bacteria; flies, maggots and mold in production areas; stagnant pools of dirty water on the floor; and rodent excrement in the supply rooms, the suit said.

Telephone calls to the company were not answered on Tuesday.

Mexicali Cheese Corporation, based at 91-52 87th Street, primarily distributes Mexican-style cheese to grocers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Inspectors from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets have visited the factory more than 30 times since 2009, according to the report, and F.D.A. inspectors have also made visits. Inspectors said they found listeria on a dolly used to transport cheese throughout the plant, on the aprons of food handlers and in a pool of liquid in a storage area.

During one inspection, an employee was seen putting cheese in his mouth, then continuing to work without changing his gloves. The suit also said that “employee food handlers were observed wiping perspiration from their faces with their forearms while wearing disposable gloves that only covered the hands up to the wrists, leaving bare forearms exposed and in direct contact with the ready-to-eat cheese being processed.”

In 2010, the F.D.A. found a batch of Mexicali’s “Queso Cotija” to be contaminated with staphylococcal bacteria, and the company voluntarily recalled the product. But later that year, and again in 2011, when inspectors found there was listeria in the facilities, the company would not recall the nearly 300 pounds of cheese that had been made on the day the samples were taken.

When pressed by inspectors, Ms. Marin said on both occasions that the cheese had most likely already been consumed, and that no one had reported any illness related to the product. According to the complaint, Mr. Vergara and Ms. Marin agreed that improvements to the plant were necessary, but in follow-up visits, inspectors noted that no changes had been made.

Mexicali Cheese makes and distributes a variety of soft Mexican cheeses to grocery stores and supermarkets in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Mexicali Cheese’s products include queso fresco [fresh cheese], queso oaxaca [Oaxacan cheese] and queso para freir [cheese for frying].

If entered by the court, the injunction would stop the company and its officers from manufacturing and distributing food until they can bring their operations into full compliance with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and FDA food safety regulations.

James Gorman of the New York Times writes that disgust is having its moment in the light as researchers find that it does more than cause that sick feeling in the stomach. It protects human beings from disease and parasites, and affects almost every aspect of human relations, from romance to politics.

In several new books and a steady stream of research papers, scientists are exploring the evolution of disgust and its role in attitudes toward food, sexuality and other people.

Paul Rozin, a psychologist who is an emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a pioneer of modern disgust research, began researching it with a few collaborators in the 1980s, when disgust was far from the mainstream.

“It was always the other emotion,” he said. “Now it’s hot.”

Speaking last week from a conference on disgust in Germany, Valerie Curtis, a self-described “disgustologist” from the London School of Public Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, described her favorite emotion as “incredibly important.”

She continued: “It’s in our everyday life. It determines our hygiene behaviors. It determines how close we get to people. It determines who we’re going to kiss, who we’re going to mate with, who we’re going to sit next to. It determines the people that we shun, and that is something that we do a lot of.”

It begins early, she said: “Kids in the playground accuse other kids of having cooties. And it works, and people feel shame when disgust is turned on them.”

Dr. Curtis is involved in efforts in Africa, India and England to explore what she calls “the power of trying to gross people out.” One slogan that appeared to be effective in England in getting people to wash their hands before leaving a bathroom was “Don’t bring the toilet with you.”

Whatever the fine points of disgust, its power to affect behavior is unquestioned, and that power ought to be put to good use, Dr. Curtis said. So, in one of her projects, she has worked with an Indian public relations agency to come up with a disgust-based campaign to encourage hand washing among mothers in small villages, which could save countless children’s lives lost to diarrhea and other diseases.

The result, now being tested, is a skit involving two characters, one a supermom and the other a disgusting, dirty man. The man makes sweets using mud and worms, stops in the middle of the performance to rush off because he has diarrhea, never washes his hands and does everything possible to be revolting.

Supermom is scrupulously clean. Her children don’t get sick, the skit makes clear. In fact, her baby grows up to be a doctor. She washes her hands all the time.

The prominence of diarrhea in the skit is no accident. One thing about studying disgust, Dr. Curtis said, is that it makes you realize how important it is to talk about the very things that disgust us, because they often present dangers to public health.

“We need to talk about” excrement, she said, using a punchier single-syllable word for maximum effect — a word she is unapologetic about using, as befits a disgustologist.

“Which is worse?” Dr. Curtis asked. To talk about it, “or to make kids die.

Shock and shame.

We’ve been using disgust for a long time. It is called barfblog.