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That’s the second person intimating to me that my home canning might not be safe. Usually the question comes quietly: “Are you sure the jars are okay?”

Though it riles me, I’ve come to expect the attitude. It’s like with eggs. When I tell people about wanting chickens for their eggs, half the time the reaction is: “But what about bird flu?”

The prevalent philosophy is that factory food must be safer: it’s more measured and controlled, and the processing is done by machines, and machines don’t make mistakes, and also, they preclude human contaminants.

That last one, I think, is what matters a lot to many people: they find the idea of human hands touching the food, or anyone breathing on it, icky. And the average home kitchen does not stack up against the scrubbed concrete tile and stainless steel scoopers and mashers and stirrers. The latter are self-cleaning, preferably.

And of course the food manufacturers will do their best by their consumers. They won’t make mistakes. They’ll clean their equipment judiciously. And use only the best ingredients. There have been no sickness or deaths with factory-processed foods. Right?

But consider factory-canned foods and bisphenol A, the stuff that got banned from baby bottles. One of my favorite watchdogs, the Environmental Working Group, determined that almost all factory-canned foods and beverages have bisphenol A in them, simply because most cans are lined with bisphenol A epoxy resin as a sealant (here). That not just in the can, but in the food.

Infants and young children are at greater risk because of their small size and developing bodies. Studies of laboratory animals or cultured human cells have shown exposure to bisphenol A can cause neural and behavioral changes, precancerous growths in breast and prostate tissues, early onset puberty and other effects at very low doses. In addition, bisphenol A crosses the placenta and has been found in amniotic fluid and umbilical cord tissue, showing that there is no prenatal protection from a mother’s exposure. (here)

Recent reports from the National Institute for Environmental Health conclude that there is concern for neural and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants, and children at current levels of exposure to BPA. Presently, there are no recommended minimum exposure limits for infants or children. More research is also needed to understand all the health effects that may be associated with exposure to Bisphenol A. (here)

But we’ve been consuming it since the ’30s.

Listen, my hands and my kitchen are clean when I prepare the food, and I follow the recipe to the letter, as well as the canning instructions. Come winter we’ll be eating our own garden-grown or Farmers Market (locally) grown food, and nothing extra.

{UPDATE} Nice discussion beginning in the comments.