Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070912/salad_safety.html
Gov't Didn't Act After E. Coli Outbreak
Wednesday September 12, 7:26 pm ET
By Garance Burke, Associated Press Writer

Government Never Improved Produce Inspections After Deadly E. Coli Outbreak

SALINAS, Calif. (AP) -- Government regulators never acted on calls  
for stepped-up inspections of leafy greens after last year's deadly  
E. coli spinach outbreak, leaving the safety of America's salads to a  
patchwork of largely unenforceable rules and the industry itself, an  
Associated Press investigation has found.

The regulations governing farms in this central California region  
known as the nation's "Salad Bowl" remain much as they were when  
bacteria from a cattle ranch infected spinach that killed three  
people and sickened more than 200.

AP's review of data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act  
found that federal officials inspect companies growing and processing  
salad greens an average of just once every 3.9 years. Some proposals  
in Congress would require such inspections at least four times a year.

In California, which grows three-quarters of the nation's greens,  
processors created a new inspection system but with voluntary  
guidelines that were unable to keep bagged spinach tainted with  
salmonella from reaching grocery shelves last month.

Despite widespread calls for spot-testing of processing plants  
handling leafy greens following last year's E. coli outbreak,  
California public health inspectors have not been given the authority  
to conduct such tests, so none have been done, the AP review found.

"We have strict standards for lead paint on toys, but we don't seem  
to take the same level of seriousness about something that we consume  
every day," said Darryl Howard, whose 83-year-old mother, Betty  
Howard, of Richland, Wash., died as a result of E. coli-related  
complications.

She was one of two elderly people to die in the outbreak that began  
in August 2006 and also included the death of a child and sicknesses  
reported from more than 200 people from Maine to Arizona.
By mid-September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a two- 
week nationwide warning not to eat fresh spinach. Authorities  
eventually traced the likely source of the E. coli to a cattle ranch  
about 40 miles east of Salinas.
But a regulatory backlash never happened.

State Sen. Dean Florez, a Central Valley Democrat who sponsored three  
failed bills to enact mandatory regulations for leafy greens earlier  
this year, said momentum faded as the E. coli case dropped from the  
headlines and the industry lobbied hard for self-regulation.

"That legislation was held up waiting for this voluntary approach for  
food safety to see if it works," said Florez, who is skeptical of  
that approach.

"It only took one 50-acre parcel to poison 200 people and bring the  
industry to its knees," he said. "We don't get why the industry would  
be playing this game of roulette with our food."
Among the AP's other findings:
-- Since September 2006, federal Food and Drug Administration staff  
inspected only 29 of the hundreds of California farms that grow fresh  
"stem and leaf vegetables," a broad category the agency uses to keep  
track of everything from cauliflower to artichokes. Agency officials  
said they did not know how many of those grew leafy greens.

-- Since raw vegetables, especially leafy greens, are minimally  
processed, they have surpassed meat as the primary culprit for food- 
borne illness. Produce caused nearly twice as many multistate  
outbreaks than meat from 1990-2004, but the funding has not caught up  
to this trend. The U.S. Department of Agriculture branch that  
prevents animal diseases gets almost twice the funding as the FDA  
receives to safeguard produce.

-- California lettuce and spinach have been the source of 13 E. coli  
outbreaks since 1996. But if salad growers or handlers violate those  
new guidelines, they are not subject to any fines, are not punishable  
under state law and may be allowed to keep selling their products.

Last year's outbreak prompted a temporary downturn in sales of salad  
greens, but more than 5 million bags of salad are now sold each day  
nationwide, a number the industry says will grow as health-conscious  
consumers opt for more greens and vegetables.

Much of those sprout near Salinas, where the fog lifted on a recent  
morning over fields of romaine and iceberg already wilting in the  
August sun.

Men in sweat shirts and baseball caps cut heads of lettuce from the  
ground and loaded them into cardboard boxes to be taken to a nearby  
plant owned by Castroville-based packager Ocean Mist Farms. From  
there, they would be shipped out to supermarkets and buyers as far  
away as Japan.

In an attempt to reassure wary customers, Ocean Mist's vice president  
recently helped organize a group to police food safety, run entirely  
by the $1.7 billion leafy greens industry. Some 118 salad processors  
have signed on to the California Leafy Green Products Handler  
Marketing Agreement, which uses its own voluntary food safety  
guidelines.

Public health inspectors can impose mandatory food-safety rules on  
the farm only after an outbreak, said Patrick Kennelly, chief of the  
food safety section at California's Department of Public Health.
Some scientists question the approach.

"Mandatory measures give a level playing field and make sure  
everybody responds," said Martin Cole, a food safety expert at the  
Illinois Institute of Technology.

But in the absence of federal regulations, 10 auditors from the  
California Department of Food and Agriculture are monitoring the  
fields, including Roxann Bramlage, who tramped down the rows of  
lettuce with a checklist.

"When somebody cuts their finger and it bleeds, what will you do?"  
Bramlage asked foreman Fernando Vasquez, standing next to a harvester  
machine rolling gently over the beds.

"When he cuts his finger, even if it's a small cut, I take him to the  
edge of the field," Vasquez said in Spanish. "Then I put a border  
around the area where he was working and I don't let anyone cut in it."
That was the right answer.

Ocean Mist passed Bramlage's field audit because the company could  
prove its growers protected their crops against pathogens, which gave  
them the right to use a state seal telling consumers the product was  
grown safely. Growers say that seal sends a powerful message to  
consumers.

"Once they join, there's nothing voluntary about the program," said  
Scott Horsfall, who oversees the marketing agreement. "If a handler  
is decertified, buyers will definitely react."
The industry-led approach isn't foolproof, however.

On Aug. 29, Metz Fresh, a grower and shipper in King City, 30 miles  
south of Salinas, recalled 8,000 cartons of fresh spinach tainted  
with salmonella. Auditors had visited the company a few weeks before,  
but inspected a field where the produce was clean. So they noted  
nothing unusual in their report.
No one knows how the bacteria got into the leaves. But the news  
rekindled fears among consumers and legislators who say they are  
skeptical of the government's willingness to let the industry police  
itself.
"Some will say the system is working and that we are catching the  
problem and recalling products, but the average consumer wouldn't  
know that," said U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who chairs the Senate  
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. "Last year, it was  
E. coli; this year, salmonella."
Harkin and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., are both working on bills to  
develop a set of mandatory national guidelines to supercede the  
current patchwork of food safety regulations.
Similar proposals were developed a year ago, but none have gone forward.

In March, the Bush Administration issued a draft of its guidance to  
minimize microbial hazards of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables. Unlike  
the strict hazard-control program governing meat and poultry, the  
guidance included no new laws.

Many growers and producers are either unaware of the guidelines or  
simply aren't complying, according to the Center for Science in the  
Public Interest, a Washington-based consumer advocacy group.

"Inspection alone isn't going to fix the problem, unless the farmers  
utilize food-safety plans that are effective for controlling  
pathogens," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of the center's food  
safety division. "They're not getting at the source of the  
contamination: on the farm."