Beware the deadly Gulf Coast oyster?

Southerners whose roots extend into rural areas won’t have any trouble remembering family gatherings in wood-frame houses cooled by a breeze from the front screen door to the back. Those occasions often featured lavish spreads of home-cooked dishes passed down for generations. The meal was so plentiful that when dinner was over, the food was simply draped with a tablecloth to be removed at suppertime.

These days, most folks wouldn’t dare eat food left out all afternoon, even in an air-conditioned dining room.

Those were the devil-may-care days of food preparation, before we knew that raw chicken handled carelessly was a case of salmonella waiting to happen and that consuming beef that hadn’t been heated to 165 degrees may give you a nasty case of E. coli.

These are prudent measures, particularly with regard to E. coli, which can create serious, lingering effects.

Surely consumers deserve information so they’ll know the risks involved with particular foods, and how to mitigate those risks.

But should the government be in the business of banning food?

The Food and Drug Administration plans to ban the sale of raw oysters from the Gulf of Mexico next year, requiring purveyors to treat the delicacy with antibacterial processes that industry insiders say substantially alter the oysters’ taste and texture.

Oysters infected with Vibrio vulnificus cause as many as 15 deaths each year, and the FDA cites a ban in California that virtually eliminated deaths associated with oysters as proof that the ban will save lives.

Rather than institute an outright ban on a seafood product that has been a staple in Southern diets and has provided an honest living for generations of fishermen and seafood mongers, perhaps the FDA might consider a mandatory warning for all raw oysters sold, similar to the warnings required on tobacco products. After all, tobacco kills about 435,000 Americans each year, which makes the oyster’s death toll of 15 seem almost trivial.