Editorial: Think your spinach is safe? Think again

The Roanoke Times

Editorial: Think your spinach is safe? Think again

After last year's E. coli outbreak, the federal government failed to step
up with a more stringent inspection and safety program.

Fresh spinach disappeared briefly from grocery store shelves and restaurant
menus last year after public health investigators blamed the fresh greens
for a deadly E. coli outbreak.

Then stores restocked, spinach dishes reappeared and American diners
gradually returned to one of their presumably healthier eating habits.

After three people had died and 200 more had been sickened, surely America's vast
regulatory safety net had caught the problem and fixed it.

This isn't China, after all.

Oh, the public cried out after federal inspectors found drug-tainted
seafood among Chinese imports and U.S. distributors discovered lead paint on many
Chinese-made toys. American consumers expect better than the lax-to-nonexistent
safety standards of China and other developing nations.

U.S. regulators wouldn't let domestically grown spinach back on the market
without stepping up safeguards against potentially lethal contamination.
Right?

Well, yes, they would. This, according to an Associated Press investigation
reported last week, is what actually followed the 2006 spinach scare that
affected consumers across the nation:

Inspectors did find the source of the E. coli outbreak. It was spinach
grown in the Salinas Valley of central California, "the nation's salad bowl."
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration did issue a warning not to eat
spinach for a couple of weeks.

Congress briefly pondered, or someone in Congress at least mentioned,
proposals to have more frequent federal inspections of growers and
processors of salad greens.

In California, a new inspection system went into effect.

People who ate spinach before the scare started eating spinach again.
And, as far as safety, nothing much changed at all.

The California legislature lost momentum for passing mandatory regulations
once people stopped dying and scary headlines disappeared. The new state
inspection system fell victim to industry lobbyists who made sure safety
standards were merely voluntary guidelines. And salad growers and processors face no fines or state sanctions if they violate the guidelines.

And how are these friendly suggestions working out for consumers? Last
month, a California produce company had to recall bagged fresh spinach it
had shipped all across the continental U.S. and to Canada. The spinach tested
positive for salmonella. On Monday, a voluntary recall of Dole salad mix
was issued after a bag tested positive for E. coli.

The federal government, of course, has the larger role to play in food
safety. Duties are split, though, between the FDA and the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, setting up bureaucratic competition for the too few dollars
available to do the work behind the regulations: inspections.

From 1990 to 2004, AP reported, produce has caused nearly twice as many
multistate outbreaks of food-borne illnesses as meat. But the USDA gets
almost twice the funding for inspecting meat as the FDA gets to inspect produce.
Just throwing money at a problem doesn't always work, as the anti-tax
rhetoric of the day goes. But, you know, sometimes it does.


_http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/wb/xp-132528_
(http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/wb/xp-132528)