The Progressive: Spinach Ripe for Outbreak

Spinach Ripe for Outbreak
By Elizabeth DiNovella, September 28, 2007



Yesterday I stopped by the downtown farmers’ market to buy some locally grown produce. I picked up some purple eggplant (3 for a dollar!), a few crisp cortland apples, a pint of candy-sweet cherry tomatoes, and a big bag of spinach.

I’ve been thinking a lot about spinach these days. Spinach bookends the Wisconsin growing season for me. A sure sign of spring is fresh spinach. Autumn arrives with a sweet, late-September harvest of this leafy green. I will miss it when it’s no longer locally available. Sure, I buy greens in the winter—trucked in from somewhere—but it just isn’t the same. Given our long Wisconsin winters, we depend upon produce from other parts of the United States, especially California, to feed us.

So it was with dismay that I read about yet another recall of spinach grown in California. Remember it was just a year ago when three people died from eating spinach contaminated with E. coli.

More than 205 people in twenty-six states also became ill; of these, fifteen percent suffered kidney failure.

Within the last month, two companies have recalled tainted leafy greens. Metz Fresh, a grower and shipper based in Central California, recalled 8,000 cartons of fresh spinach sullied with salmonella. Last week, Dole Foods recalled packages of its “Hearts Delight” romaine lettuce brand sold in nine U.S. states and in Canada after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency found E. coli in a sample. (There have been no reports of anyone becoming sick from these products.)

There were calls for stepped-up inspections of leafy greens in light of last year’s E. coli outbreak. But government regulators failed to increase inspections, reports the AP.

Instead, a patchwork of largely unenforceable rules and the producers themselves regulate the $1.5 billion dollar industry. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/mag_wxld092807

is the presence of cattle/livestock farms uphill from the produce region and the water runoff associated with the operations.

(The Salinas Valley is a long triangle of flatland following the Salinas on its way between the Coast Range and an interior range to the Pacific near Monterey. The bottom lands are 'best' for produce while the more arid - uphill - regions an either side are typically livestock country.)

That and handling procedures post harvest have been pointed to as likely culprits in the repeat presence of e coli in some inspections.

Some farms are working to create buffers between produce and livestock areas to block runoff problems, but I'm not sure how intensive or widespread the effort is. :shrug: