News from NOFA/Massachusetts
Lesson of Spinach Contamination Tragedy:
Eat Local Organic Food
by Jack Kittredge for NOFA/Mass
September 27, 2006
During the last twelve days organic food has been under attack. On September 15 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning concerning E. coli O157:H7 contamination of fresh, bagged spinach. This variant of the E. coli bacteria can cause hemolytic uremic syndrome, a potentially fatal kidney complication. The spinach had apparently been shipped all over the U. S., since reports of adverse reactions came in from Arizona to Maine, Washington state to Tennessee. As of this writing at least 175 people have been sickened by the outbreak, and 2 have died.
Organic food came under attack during this period because of two facts. First, the spinach had been bagged and shipped by Natural Selection Foods LLC, a very large Salinas Valley, California, company that ships spinach under many brands, including several organic ones. Second, E. Coli is commonly found in animal manure. Some critics of organic food suggested that the source of the contamination was the use of manure for fertility in organic spinach fields.
Such critics are poorly informed, however, not realizing that organic regulations require manure to be thoroughly composed and heated to a temperature which will kill all pathogens before being spread on organic fields. Conventional (non-organic) farms, however, can use raw manure directly on land. In fact, most animal manure is disposed of in this way, without composting. In May of 2004 a University of Minnesota study, published in the Journal of Food Protection, found that no statistical difference existed in contamination rates from organic versus non-organic vegetables.
As officials gain more information about this spinach incident, however, the truth is emerging. The organic brands have been cleared and as of this date the contamination has been traced to only non-organic bags of Dole brand baby spinach.
There is an important lesson to learn from this incident about the safety of our food supply. In the last 50 years the production and processing of food has gone from small family farms with local canneries and packing houses to mammoth factories-in-the-field and huge processing plants. A food contamination incident now is no longer a local problem; it is a national one.
Defenders of our food system are fond of saying that the United States has the safest food supply in the world. This is simply not true. According to a 2005 study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, there are 76 million cases a year of food-borne illness in this country, and the rate of acute gastroenteritis here surpassed that of all the European countries studied. It is 3.6 times that in England, 2.5 times that in the Netherlands, and 1.2 times that in Ireland.
Tragic incidents such as the current one involving spinach are not new here. Since 1995 there have been 19 outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 linked to lettuce and spinach. At least 8 of these have been traced to the Salinas Valley. The FDA wrote those very farmers on November 4, 2005 that: "In light of continuing outbreaks, it is clear that more needs to be done."
What is the problem that the FDA recognizes and urges more be done about? Simply the fact that mega-farms are producing tons of raw produce downstream from large cattle feedlots which cannot properly dispose of their manure. We have 53,700 acres in spinach production in this country, and 74% of them are in California. The shipper involved in this case bags spinach under 34 different brands to send all over the country.
And yet that spinach is grown in an area watered by creeks, streams and rivers so choked with E. coli that some test at 30 times the Environmental Protection Agency's limit. In some areas, according to a June report by the Central Coast water board, there is "manure lining the banks of channels of tributaries to the Salinas River." Although surface water is not normally used for irrigation, in times of heavy rain floodwaters contaminated with this manure wash over the low-lying agricultural fields. The FDA has suggested that any produce that comes into contact with floodwaters be discarded. But that option is not a requirement, and is costly to the farmer.
What makes this situation even more threatening is the nature of the E. coli bacterium involved. Normal E. coli bacteria are abundant in the digestive systems of healthy cattle and humans. In both, the level of stomach acids is adequate to keep the microorganism under control. The variant O157:H7 is a different story, however. It loves acids and if ingested will thrive in your gut, making you quite sick, or even killing you. It does not exist in the digestive tract of cattle raised on pasture. It apparently evolved in the quite recent world of cattle raised on grain (for faster weight gain and quicker profit) - whose stomachs are unnaturally acidic.
So we have an unnaturally virulent disease organism washed onto farmland that is growing raw produce for your eating pleasure. What happens next?
It helps to understand what happens next if you know how pre-packaged spinach and other greens are grown and harvested. Rather than pull the entire plant up, giant harvesting machines are used to cut the leaves, leaving roots from which more leaves will grow. This process, however, creates a wound and point of entry in the leaves where the cut was made. If a harvesting machine blade picks up some fecal matter and is not properly cleaned, during the course of a day tons of produce can be contaminated. Worse, that contamination enters a small way into the leaf through its vascular structure and no amount of washing can dislodge it. To properly kill the E. coli so much chlorine would have to be used that the greens would smell like a municipal swimming pool. Inside the sealed bag the greens are still alive, as are the bacteria, that have a wonderful little sealed environment in which to reproduce.
Despite a history of such outbreaks, and warnings from the government less than a year ago, the greens industry in California continues to produce massive amounts of product while coexisting with nearby feedlots and their oceans of manure. Perhaps it is time for consumers to enter the equation.
Many consumers have already decided that fresh local and organic produce is the top food priority for them and their families -- the growth of farmers markets, CSAs and other local marketing arrangements has been spectacular over the last decade. As more eaters become familiar with how food is produced the distant factory-farmed food option may become even less appealing.
Spinach and other salad greens are cool weather crops that can be grown in most parts of the country during most of the year. They grow quickly and are easy to manage organically. While most local growers cannot bag and seal such greens without special equipment, it takes only a moment for the consumer to wash and prep them for a salad. If consumers vote with their dollars for more freshness, safety and nutrition as opposed to convenience, we expect to see further demand for local and organic greens and other produce.
This page was last modified on January 21, 2008 at 5:33:29 PM.
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