Safe food has a financial payoff for all.

It’s no coincidence that we’ve been seeing the growth of both the ‘eat locally’ and organic food movements at the same time as shocking lapses in food safety. Who wanted to eat mass produced eggs last summer or feed them to their kids after the horrifying scenes from the henhouses in Iowa? In recent years, Americans have been losing trust in the nation’s food supply and that’s a huge problem. Not just for a population that faces significant health care costs and job insecurity but for the food production industry as well. You’d think that instead of opposing plans to improve food safety, the industry would get on board and find good solutions for all involved. Apparently that hasn’t been the case as Michael Pollan and Eric Shlosser point out in an op-ed in today’s NYT. It reminds me of the way the financial industry opposed financial regulation after the crisis of 2008. When will big business learn that integrity isn’t a cost but an investment?