The talk began with a rabid bat attack, or at least the story of one.

Its victims were the speaker's children.

She'd found them in a room with a giant, brown flutterer. "Did it bite you," she asked. "Did you touch it?"

A few hours and a phone call later the children were getting a battery of vaccines at more than $2000 per child.

"Better safe than sorry." The county official had said.

This tale was how Dr. Sandra Steingraber opened her talk "Who's Afraid of a Local Tomato" to a packed Congerville village hall on Saturday.

Its last line, Steingaber went on, was the key.

Whenever there's a viral or bacterial threat to Americans, the accepted response is "better safe than sorry."

If there's a one percent chance the bat has rabies, take the $2000 vaccine. If even one citizen could die of tomato-borne salmonella, recall nationally and plow the fields under.

But what if the disease is cancer and the cause could be a coctail of anonymous chemical exposures over a lifetime?

Steingraber asked the audience to consider an America where these potentially toxic chemicals were approached with the same vigilance as potentially dangerous pathogens.

In this America, pesticides that may cause cancer would be recalled as quickly as tomatoes that may cause salmonella.

And because pesticide exposure is increasingly linked to higher rates of cancer, birth defects, stillbirths and stunted IQ's, the argument continued, this America would have to "completely rebuild its food system."

Steingraber suggested that the new food system would stress local and organic products which forgo toxic chemicals and don't require epic, oil-guzzling transport to reach their markets.

The local food would also be more traceable, Steingraber said. So if their was a problem, pathogenic or otherwise, authorities could find and isolate the offending farm.

Steingraber then spoke about the effect of errant agricultural and industrial chemicals on unborn children.

Breast milk, Steingraber said, holding up a half-full mason jar for the audience, is a "living food" and "Infectious disease assassin." One that innoculates children against illness and improves IQ.

Breast milk, Steingraber continued, is also the most chemically contaminated human food on the planet.

Steingraber said that while it is still by far the healthiest food for a newborn, widespread agricultural and industrial use of chemicals has "compromised the goodness of breastmilk."

"Is it not the right of every newborn to receive pure breast milk?" she asked.

The talk ended with a short QA and a good halfhour of mingling among attendees.

A television crew attended the event, capturing the speech for a documentary about Dr. Steingraber, who won national renown for her book "Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment."