Is Our Food-Production System Vulnerable to Black Swans?

Share

Tweet

Email This Page

Sign up here for
our Newsletter: *

 So far, the month of May has been a yin and yang, a balance of my newly acquired farm life versus my day job in the corporate food world. On the farm I spend my days wearing jeans and rubber boots. On professional days, I button up in a designer suit with heels, pearls and the Wall Street Journal tucked under my arm. I am more comfortable in the latter garb, but as I learn more about the denim side of the food world, the inadequacies in how our food is grown, manufactured, transported and priced are more and more transparent.

At a recent food-safety conference, track chair Kantha Shelke, PhD, introduced the first speaker from McDonald’s Corp., setting up the topic by citing the story of the Black Swans.

The swan that wasn’t, then was

If you aren’t familiar with the story, it originates from 16^th century London. At the time, it was an undeniable given that all swans were white … that is until an explorer discovered Black Swans in the land down under. This Australian lesson was the inspiration for the title of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s 2007 bestseller, The Black Swan.

Taleb, an essayist and financial wizard, uses the metaphor of Black Swans to describe those historical events and scientific discoveries that are rare and unpredicted, and that change the world ­– for example, the Internet, World War I and the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Among the wealth of ideas in the book:

* that we cannot reliably predict the future by analyzing data from the past

* that one cannot anticipate the inevitable Black Swans in complex systems

* that we must identify the areas of vulnerability

* that we must prepare to deal creatively with them.

Shelke believes strongly that food safety is the Black Swan of the food world, that our food-production system is vulnerable to just such game-changing occurrences.

As fate would have it, while the McDonald’s representative was making his presentation, a rough audience member crowded him away from the microphone and began spouting derogatory remarks about the McDonald’s. The conference crasher looked a lot like one of the many conference planners mulling about but, alas, she was from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

Before the audience could make sense of what was happening, she was scooped up by bodyguards (hired by none other than McDonald’s). Meanwhile, in the shadows at the back of the room, a PETA compatriot tried to film the incident, but an alert conference planner pulled a paparazzi move by covering the lens with her hand and knocking the camera person off her feet.

Shelke couldn’t have anticipated a better segue to tie the current challenges of food safety with the Black-Swan concept. Though PETA hoped to catch everyone off guard, what they didn’t know was the conference planners and McDonald’s anticipated the intrusion. Thus, the planners ultimately prevented a black-swan event from changing the face and focus of the conference.

The commitment to prevent food-borne illness in modern-day food production must have the same pre-emptive shield protecting it if we are to truly see safer food in this generation. And that is precisely what the Obama administration is setting out to achieve, which I’ll address in my next blog.

Next: Can the Obama administration tame the food-safety Black Swans?

Kimberly Stewart can be reached at eatingbetweenthelines@gmail.com

To download an excerpt from Eating Between the Lines, click here.

Read Kimberly Stewart's first blog here, and the rest of her blogs here.

Click here to return to WellWise.org's homepage.