market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Market Farming
List archive
- From: KAKerby AT aol.com
- To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training
- Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 17:27:32 EST
The science behind the new guidelines were based on recent studies which
have tracked how long E. coli lived either in the soil or on
surfaces. They provided details from one of the studies, which
tracked soil, onion and carrot contamination, on four test plots per vegetable
along with a control plot. If you want the exact name and authors of the
study, I can provide that but the title was pretty long. Those results
were published in the Food Microbiology journal in 2005. In that
study:
1) After the soils were innoculated, they then watched to see how long the
populations would live in the soil, along with carrots and onions grown in the
soil. With the population numbers on a graph, the numbers stair-stepped
down a few times throughout the experiment but quite a few were still alive at
Day 120, with those final holdouts dying off between Day 180 and Day 205.
Furthermore, carrots and onions harvested from that soil continued to have
viable E. coli survive on the surface of those roots for another long period -
carrots harvested on day 126 still had viable E coli on them on Day 168.
2) Only 10 E. coli cells are sufficient to cause illness in human
beings. So having even extremely low counts still alive in the soil can
provide for a 'bloom' later if the right conditions are met.
3) E coli is extremely mobile in irrigation water, which means that any
soils containing E coli which are splashed or sprayed onto crops can carry the
E. coli to any wetted surface.
Someone asked whether the organic standards would be changed to reflect
these findings. The WSDA Organic Certification staffer replied "I sure
hope so". When the WSDA scientists were asked whether these policies were
going to eventually move from being guidelines to being requirements, they
replied that regulatory action may never occur. But they also pointed
out that large-scale buyers such as Walmart and Costco are already putting
requirements like this into practice from the farmers and brokers they buy
from. Once those big-box buyers make decisions like that, the smaller
grocers and other retailers quickly follow suit. The WSDA staffers said
once the bigger retailers all jump on that bandwagon, these guidelines
economically become a requirement even if they are not yet a regulatory
requirement.
These are still "suggestions", to be sure. And perhaps they always
will be. But the reasons for what they're recommending seemed pretty
straightforward to me. Having watched a few illness cycles bring down
producers during past E. coli scares, I'd like to be able to look my customers
in the eye and say 'yes, I am familiar with the risks and yes I take best
management steps to minimize that risk.' I've been asked that before and
I'm not going to stop answering that question now. If we didn't rely
so heavily on animal manures and composts here to maintain soil fertility, I
probably wouldn't be quite so interested. But using those tools I felt the
need to be respectful of when they can create problems.
Kathryn Kerby
Frog Chorus Farm
Snohomish, WA
In a message dated 3/2/2010 12:36:37 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
organic87 AT frontiernet.net writes:
|
-
Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
KAKerby, 03/02/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, William H Shoemaker, 03/02/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Garth & Kim Travis, 03/02/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Road's End Farm, 03/02/2010
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
-
Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
KAKerby, 03/02/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Garth & Kim Travis, 03/02/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, David Inglis, 03/02/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Ryan Platte, 03/02/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Road's End Farm, 03/03/2010
-
Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
KAKerby, 03/02/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Garth & Kim Travis, 03/02/2010
-
Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
Road's End Farm, 03/03/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, maury sheets, 03/03/2010
-
Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
Roots Farm & Karen Sutherland, 03/04/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, William H Shoemaker, 03/04/2010
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.