The After-Shock of Contaminated Spinach

If you're interested in what happened after contaminated spinach sickened people across the country two years ago, hop over to this must read by my friend Barry Estabrook at Gourmet magazine.

I've covered aspects of the spinach crisis before, but Barry goes further and looks into the environmental aftershock that has occurred from farmers seeking to put a protective shield around their fields, with no evidence that they're addressing the root cause of the problem.

In the name of food safety, they have scraped 30-foot-wide borders of bare dirt around the edges of fields, set up poison-bait stations for ground squirrels and mice, installed eight-foot-high fences to exclude deer and other wildlife, ripped vegetation from creeks and ditches, and drained ponds and lakes or treated them with chemicals that kill every living thing in them. Creeks flowing into the Salinas River run brown with silty water polluted with fertilizer and pesticides. Piles of bleached, bonelike tree trunks and roots have replaced wooded groves.

“The science isn’t there to prove that deer are a factor, but farmers are being required to moonscape the habitat around their fields in the name of food safety,” says Bob Martin, general manager of Rio Farms, a 6,000-acre operation. “That’s amputating a person’s leg because they have a hangnail.”

I'd heard about these draconian measures from wildlife and small farm groups and knew it was ripe for a deeper look. Luckily, Barry did too. His article makes you think twice about what "food safety" really means, when it's regulated with a bulldozer.  Here's another observation:

Of the 12 recorded E. coli outbreaks attributed to California leafy greens since 1999, 10 have been traced to mechanically harvested greens bagged in large production facilities. The source of two outbreaks has yet to be determined. None have been linked to small farms selling to local markets.

After the jump are Barry's tips for avoiding pathogens:

Think Outside the Bag

· Cooking is the only way to kill bacteria in greens for certain, but there are some less drastic steps you can take to protect yourself.

· You’ve heard it a thousand times: Buy local; buy small. Packaged produce in the supermarket can be more than two weeks old. Produce from a CSA or farmers market packed in ordinary, unsealed plastic bags is most likely picked a day or two before you buy it.

· Buy whole heads or bunches of intact plants; precut edges provide a particularly easy point of entry for bacteria.

· Washing won’t get all the bugs out of contaminated bagged greens, but it can remove some surface bacteria.

· If you do buy prewashed, factory-bagged produce, look at the “use before” date. If it’s getting close, avoid the product. The longer it has been in the bag, the more opportunities for pathogens to grow.

· Never, ever eat uncooked greens from bags whose expiration date has passed, no matter how fresh they appear.

Comments

[Rebecca T. of HonestMeat]

The amount of habitat that is being destroyed in the name is food safety is both counterproductive and illegal. You need biodiversity to promote the balance of predator and prey, beneficials and pathogens. It also violates county, state, and federal law to remove riparian habitat, wetlands, or drain or divert water courses without first applying for a lengthy and expensive permit. Farmers (and farming corporations) need to inform their food safety auditors (that usually are sent by the buyers) that they cannot ask them to break the law in the name of food safety. It is also time that these government agencies do their job and prevent all of this habitat destruction from happening. When California only has 1% of our wetlands left, we cannot cower in our offices and cross our fingers that farmers will do the right thing.

[Organic George]

Actually one out break was from a small farm, they were "Organic" but not certified.

When the inspectors came they found that the couple used the sorting belt as a diaper table for their newborn.

This was in the 90's

[Rebecca T. of HonestMeat]

Sam- please consider attending the upcoming November 20th event in San Francisco called "Food Safety Gone Astray: The Misguided War on Wildlife- A Teach-In for the Media, Decision Makers, and Stakeholders." You can also attend via a webinar.

Register now for teach-in .

This issue is not going away and only going to get worse, especially if the USDA pushes for some sort of national standards for produce food safety. Please keep talking about it on your blog and in your writing...