Why Freakonomics Is Wrong About Cantaloupes

[n2doc]

Federal investigators have traced the source of listeria-tainted cantaloupes, which have killed 25 people and sickened 123, to a single farm in Colorado.

Holly, Colorado-based Jensen Farms grows, packs, and ships 480 acres of cantaloupes. This year, it produced 300,000 cases of the fruit, which went out to—and sickened people in—26 states. In addition to cantaloupes, it also grows two subsidized commodity crops, wheat and corn, for which it drew $66,000 in federal direct payments in 2010.

And like many operations trying to hustle loads of product out the door as quickly and cheaply as possible, Jensen appears to have cut corners. FDA investigators (report here) turned up no evidence of listeria in the field, but plenty of it in Jensen's packing house, where they found deplorable conditions: standing water on the ground contaminated with the same strain of listeria that ended up in the offending cantaloupes, as well as filthy packing equipment also contaminated with listeria. Then there's this:

Another potential means for introduction of Listeria monocytogenes contamination into the packing facility was a truck used to haul culled cantaloupe to a cattle operation. This truck traveled to and from a cattle operation and was parked adjacent to the packing facility where contamination may have been tracked via personnel or equipment, or through other means into the packing facility.


So what we have here is a case of conditions at a single large operation endangering the health of consumers over a huge swath of the country: the perils of the industrial food system writ large.

more

http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/10/freakonomics-cantaloupes-listeria

[provis99]

1. Freakonomics is just silly libertarian bullshit

designed for gullible hipsters and Ayn Rand loving teenagers.

[applegrove]

2. And why there should be regulations.

[drmeow]

3. I read the book Freakonomics

It suffers from the same flaw that a lot of economics suffers from which is perfectly illustrated by this joke:

Three people are stranded on a small island. One is a physicist, one is a circus strongman, and one is an economist. After a few days of surviving on fruit, they discover a cache of canned food, and they have to decide how to open it. The physicist says to the strongman "Why don't you climb that tree, and smash the cans down on the rocks, and burst them open?"

The strongman says, "No, that would spatter the stuff all over. I can open the cans with my teeth!"

The economist says "First, we must assume that we have a can opener."

Too many economists don't actually live in the real world. They make assumptions which have very little basis in fact or are supported in any way by research.

That is not to say that there aren't good economists but too many of them work with models which require assumptions that have never and will never be true.