New industry rules for leafy greens aim to protect consumers from E. coli. Farmers and conservationists question the science behind the standards
Carl Nagin
Sunday, December 16, 2007
More...
Late in August 2006, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta began investigating cases of severe food poisoning reported by health officials in 26 states and one Canadian province. Over the next six weeks, a rare and particularly virulent strain of Escherichia coli 0157:H7 sickened more than 200 people across North America, hospitalizing half of them, some with severe kidney damage, and killing two elderly women and a child. For epidemiologists, the outbreak presented a breakthrough because a DNA-fingerprinting system enabled CDC investigators to trace the source of the infections from clusters of cases nationwide.
Bacteria in stool samples of hospitalized patients were genetically matched to pathogens in packaged, "ready to eat" Dole brand spinach that they had recently purchased and consumed. Further, product codes on the bags indicated that the contaminated greens had been processed during one shift on Aug. 15 at a plant in San Juan Bautista then owned and operated by Natural Selection Foods. The company's records showed that the spinach had been harvested from four fields in Monterey and San Benito counties.
Just how the spinach became contaminated and where in the process from field to package the bacteria originated will probably never be known. An investigative report released in March by the Food and Drug Administration could make "no definitive determination" as to "how E. coli 0157:H7 pathogens contaminated spinach in this outbreak."
The consequences of the crisis fell heavily on California's Central Coast farmers, who are now being pressed by buyers to comply with a con{fllig}icting array of new food-safety measures, some of which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulatory agencies, are costly, scientifically unproven and environmentally harmful. Some violate state regulations, and may even be counterproductive to food safety. But the growers must follow these measures in order to market their crops to the larger contractors or handlers.
The new set of rules is jeopardizing the future of sustainable agriculture and of the habitat and clean water it supports, according to the Nature Conservancy's Monterey Project Director Chris Fischer: "Farmers and conservationists in California have been working together for more than 20 years to develop practices that help protect water quality and wildlife habitat, but since last fall, farmers have been under enormous pressure from their buyers to go the other direction. To stay in business, they are being forced to build miles of fences along streams, cut down trees and bulldoze ponds. Some actions, like creating bare-earth buffers along waterways, may actually increase the risk of contamination downstream."
Search for the source
The E. coli outbreak of August 2006 was "one of the worst ever reported in produce," stated a 2006 "Critical Issues" report by the nonprofit Organic Center, which conducts peer-reviewed scientific research on organic food and farming. It prompted investigations by the FBI and FDA and led to one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history: On Sept. 14, 2006, the FDA issued a consumer and retailer advisory not to eat or sell any bagged or fresh spinach. The product was pulled off store shelves and was not served in restaurants. This advisory remained in effect until Sept. 22.
Hank Giclas, vice president for science and technology for Western Growers, a produce industry group, remembered the day the nation's spinach industry was shut down. "I was in my office, and we were frantically summoned to a conference call with FDA officials. Their advisory took everyone by surprise. It was an unprecedented action. They'd never before issued any kind of blanket 'Do not consume spinach' warning. The industry ground to a halt."
Members of Western Growers in California and Arizona grow, pack and ship nearly half the nation's fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts. Giclas estimated that the shutdown cost the spinach industry roughly $100 million and affected other bagged salad produce as well.
On Sept. 20, five weeks after the Natural Selection Foods plant had processed the spinach for Dole, FDA investigators began taking soil and water samples from four of the ranches where it had been grown and harvested. Samples from one ranch in San Benito County had E. coli pathogens indistinguishable from the strain identified by the CDC's DNA-fingerprinting system, PulseNet. These were found in soil, river water and cow and feral pig feces at Paicines Ranch, a large grass-fed beef operation that had leased a small amount of its land to a spinach grower. But these E. coli-infested samples were found nearly a mile away from the implicated spinach field. None were found on the plot itself.
Whatever the origin and pathways of the outbreak, the washing procedures at the processing plant failed to eliminate the pathogens, and its quality-assurance protections failed to detect it after the processing. The FDA report was heavily redacted in a way that limits public access to details of Natural Selection Foods' processing operations. NSF chief operating officer Charles Sweat was quick to divert attention back to the fields and away from the manufacturing end.
In an Oct. 15, 2006, article in the New York Times ("The Vegetable-Industrial Complex"), author and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism professor Michael Pollan, who has written widely about food and its production, noted that "a great deal of spinach from a great many fields gets mixed together in the water at that plant, giving microbes from a single field an opportunity to contaminate a vast amount of food. The plant in question washes 26 million servings of salad every week. In effect, we're washing the whole nation's salad in one big sink."
The FDA had known about contamination problems in spinach and other Central Coast and Salinas Valley produce for years. Over the past decade, nine other E. coli outbreaks associated with the area's leafy greens had been documented. Prior warnings from the FDA and the California Department of Public Health included letters to Salinas packers, Western Growers and other industry groups, calling for implementation of safer manufacturing and sanitation practices and, more recently, alerts about wells and irrigation systems contaminated with animal wastes.
However, the FDA has little enforcement authority over the food industry, in contrast with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which monitors and regulates meat, poultry and eggs. While the USDA has on-site inspectors at the nation's slaughterhouses who can shut them down on the spot if they fail inspections, the FDA lacks comparable manpower and does not have that authority. The FDA's food-safety oversight has been the target of intense criticism from congressional critics, including Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and from advocacy groups who complain about its coziness with the produce industry. The FDA's inspection capacity has been hit hard by budget cuts in recent years. Between 2003 and 2006, the number of safety tests for U.S.-produced food decreased nearly 75 percent, from 9,748 to 2,455, according to FDA statistics. Last April, Robert E. Brackett, director of the FDA's food-safety division, told the Washington Post that he believes manufacturers are better equipped to "build safety into their products rather than us chasing after them."
Industry shapes a safety plan
Immediately after the outbreak, prompted by the FDA and California's public health and agriculture departments, Western Growers began developing a Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, with guidelines that would serve as a standard for certifying the safe handling, shipment and sale of produce marketed by its signatories. This agreement would be administered by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which would use a USDA-designed inspection program that has been applied in other states.
Food and Agriculture Secretary, A.G. Kawamura, is a past president of Western Growers. In February, he appointed an advisory board for the marketing agreement composed almost exclusively of representatives from the bigger "handlers" - those who process, package, ship and distribute leafy green products. Conservation groups and resource agencies that had been working for years with Central Coast farmers had complained from the outset that the Western Growers' initiative was a closed-door process designed to serve the interests of handlers and big buyers. California Certified Organic Farmers, one of the nation's oldest and largest certifiers of organic produce, criticized the "lack of transparency in the process."
When word got out about some of the measures proposed in discussions, such as plowing up riparian buffers, eliminating wildlife and erecting high fences around fields, alarm spread through the farming, regulatory and conservation communities.
On Oct. 25, 2006, Roger W. Briggs, executive officer of the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, aired his agency's concerns in a letter to Brackett at the FDA, with copies sent to Giclas at Western Growers and other industry groups. The emerging guidelines (known variously as metrics and GAPs - good agricultural practices), "may con{fllig}ict with the [RWQCB's] mission to protect water quality and may increase water quality violations in farming areas," Briggs wrote. "We are aware of concerns that riparian or on-farm vegetation may attract wildlife that may spread the 0157:H7 E. coli, but are not aware of any research to support those concerns." He requested a meeting with the FDA and the opportunity "to review any future proposed food safety guidelines or suggested farm practices that may affect water quality."
Almost three months later, on Jan. 10, 2007, with Briggs still awaiting a response to his letter, the water board's chairman, Jeffrey Young, wrote to CDFA and Western Growers, noting that 92 percent of the region's total irrigated acreage - including all the acreage farmed by the large growers of leafy greens - was enrolled in collaborative programs designed to improve water quality. "We know that vegetated conservation practices are among the most effective tools for protecting and improving water quality," Young wrote. "Millions of federal and state taxpayer dollars have been invested in researching and promoting conservation practices, and in assisting farmers in implementing such practices." He warned that a "major accomplishment on the part of the agricultural industry" was now at risk.
Not until after Young's letter, as well as letters from the EPA, the Department of Commerce and other agencies were fired off, did Western Growers respond to these concerns. It amended an early draft of the marketing agreement to incorporate the conservation concerns and comments of resource agencies, including this language:
"Fencing, vegetation removal and destruction of habitat may result in adverse impacts to the environment. Potential adverse impacts include loss of habitat to beneficial insects and pollinators; wildlife loss; increased discharges of sediment and other pollutants resulting from the loss of vegetative filtering; and increased air quality impacts if bare soil is exposed to wind. It is recommended that producers check for local, state and federal laws and regulations that protect riparian habitat, restrict removal of vegetation or habitat or restrict construction of wildlife deterrent fences in riparian areas or wildlife corridors."
The Marketing Agreement addresses a wide range of food-safety issues, including sanitizing farm equipment; preventing transfer of pathogens from field workers; wildlife encroachments from deer, goats, pigs, cattle and sheep; soil amendments; and water usage. (See Western Growers' Web site, www.wga.com, for the June 2007 draft.)
Among those who thought that the agreement fell short of what was necessary was Charles Benbrook of the Organic Institute, who sent comments to Western Growers, some of which, he acknowledges, were adopted in various drafts of the agreement. But Benbrook found the document remains most seriously {fllig}awed with respect to water-testing requirements. The required test is based on the wrong organism, and the standard applied to testing for E. coli in irrigation water is "unscientific and indefensible," because it relies on "an outmoded recreational water quality risk assessment" from the mid-1980s used by the EPA to test swimming water, he states in a June 2007 report, "Unfinished Business: Preventing E. Coli 0157 Outbreaks in Leafy Greens" (available at www.organic-center.org).
The metrics do not require testing irrigation water specifically for E. coli 0157, only for generic E. coli, Benbrook states. He concludes: "Water with detectable levels of E. coli 0157 should not be used to irrigate leafy greens. Period."
Numerous phone calls to Giclas, of Western Growers, asking for comment went unaswered.
The Marketing Agreement went into effect in April, and as of June, 111 produce handlers, who process nearly all the leafy greens produced in California, have signed on to it. However, the con{fllig}ict over ways to ensure safety is far from over, and farmers are hard-pressed in its midst. Some major handlers and contractors who have signed the agreement, including packaged salad giant Fresh Express, are individually demanding that farmers take additional safety measures, including some that have little science or common sense behind them.
No dogs, no frogs
Fresh Express, purchased in 2005 for $855 million by Chiquita Brands International, is the nation's top producer of packaged salads, producing 40 percent of those sold in supermarkets. Last year the company processed 1.2 billion pounds of raw lettuce and spinach. Although it signed the Western Growers agreement in April, Fresh Express has its own far more demanding requirements for greens it buys.
Jim Lugg, senior food-safety scientist with Fresh Express, has worked with the Salinas company since 1963. He said the company supplies growers with its own set of field-management guidelines and good agricultural practices, but would not provide me with these, saying they are a "proprietary document protected by copyright." Instead, he referred me to an Oct. 23, 2006, article in USA Today ("Fresh Express leads the pack in produce safety") that outlines some general requirements.
According to this article, Fresh Express will not accept produce from fields grown within a mile of a cattle feed lot or dairy operation, or if they are within 150 yards of rivers or habitats that attract wildlife. Fields that show evidence of wild pig visitation cannot be harvested for two years. The company also demands fences and rodent traps every 50 feet around field perimeters.
"If we find animal tracks in a field," Lugg told me, "then we don't believe that the product is safe to harvest." That means, he said, any animals - from frogs to dogs. "We don't like to see animals in a field of lettuce. We don't think people like the idea." Asked if this was more about cosmetic issues than food safety, he replied: "What you need to realize is that many more bovine intestines have been studied than mice to see if they are carriers of E. coli. Maybe mice and kangaroo rats are just as risky as large animals." He added that among studies the company has funded is one to examine whether insects are disseminating 0157.
Asked whether he had talked with environmental agencies about the impact of Fresh Express-food-safety guidelines on riparian habitats in the Salinas Valley, Lugg responded: "It's not our place to do that. Some public agencies need to do that."
Steve Church is a co-owner of the Salinas-based Church Brothers, a large grower, shipper and processing company known for its True Leaf Farms brand. Shortly after the outbreak, Church Brothers announced that it would install 6 miles of additional fencing around its lots "to prevent any wildlife intrusion into our fields." In late May, the company announced a price increase of 20 cents per package on all True Leaf and Church Brothers produce. It justified the increase as a cost of its new food-safety measures, including fencing. Church is a member of the California Leafy Green Handler Marketing Board, which makes recommendations to the secretary of agriculture and the CDFA on the operation of Western Growers' Marketing Agreement and the inspection program intended to give it teeth.
I asked Church about the apparent contradiction between the Marketing Agreement and Fresh Express's more aggressive stance toward fencing and wildlife.
"We [Church Brothers] adhere to Fresh Express guidelines," he said. "You gotta do that if you want to be a vendor, or not sell to them. If you grow for Fresh Express, you're more limited in the land you can use. Their recommendations go beyond the agreement."
Farmers in the crossfire
Bob Martin, a past president of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, is general manager of Rio Farms, one of the largest growers and employers in King City. These days he spends much of his time trying to make sense of demands imposed in the name of safety by various buyers and handlers who contract for his produce and market it.
"I grow for several different companies, and each one is requiring a different level of compliance," he said. "They're fighting for customer bases in the big-box stores, Costco and Wal-Mart. They're battling for those accounts by saying 'My product is safer than yours.' "
"I understand we have to get consumers' confidence back. Spinach sales haven't recovered. We're only selling 75 to 80 percent of our produce, and bagged salads have taken a big hit. But a lot of this is all smoke and mirrors. We need good solid research that will tighten up some of these metrics. How long does the bacterium survive in soil? In water? Are deer really an issue? How far will E. coli 0157:H7 travel in the wind? People are looking for answers."
In April, speaking at a conference on water quality and food safety in San Luis Obispo, Martin told of farmers being asked to fence their fields and tear out riparian habitat that they have restored to comply with environmental regulations. He pleaded to his audience, which included researchers from the National Science Foundation, the USDA and the FDA, as well as academic microbiologists, environmental scientists and crop and food safety specialists: Farmers need help, now. He urged the researchers to talk to industry leaders.
Safeguards or marketing ploys?
The crisis has everyone involved in the leafy-greens business, especially farmers, on high alert - and nervous. "Maybe some of these things we should have been doing years ago," said a Salinas Valley grower who asked not to be identified. Keeping cattle pasture a distance away from crops was a good idea, he said. How great that distance should be is another question. Another farmer told of a grower who was asked to remove a grassy waterway to get rid of frogs and rodents. A story is going around that the crop of one field was rejected because crows had been seen {fllig}ying over it.
Kirk Schmidt, executive director of the nonprofit Central Coast Water Quality Preservation Inc., which is involved in environmental monitoring and helping farmers preserve water quality, believes that the debate over safety measures for leafy greens is being driven by people who work in risk management and the legal departments of the big producers and supermarket chains - people "who don't understand that crops are grown outside in the dirt." That's bad news for water quality and sustainable agriculture in the Central Coast.
Liability, along with branding and creating a positive image for produce, is not a trivial concern for big handlers and packagers such as Dole and Fresh Express, which together control 90 percent of the retail market for packaged salads, according to the Produce Marketing Association. The Seattle law firm Marler Clark successfully represented victims of last fall's E. coli outbreak in lawsuits against Dole. Since 1973, the firm has won settlements and verdicts for food sickness victims totaling $300 million. That amount is nearly three times the total production value of Monterey County's entire spinach crop in 2006. Monterey County's $3.5 billion agriculture industry has been turned upside down by the food safety crisis.
Amid the distress and anger in the farming community, Martin relies on caution and vigilance. "I look to our workforce," he said, "anyone in the field. The awareness of employees is so heightened that I think if it had been at that level before, this wouldn't have happened. They see a deer - they bring it to the managers' attention. They find lettuce with bird poop on it - where before they might have just taken off the leaf, now they drop it."
Fencing the river
In June, I drove with Martin along a stretch of the Salinas River to see firsthand what some of the new, so-called clean farming practices imposed by buyers and contractors were all about. (Martin asked that I not identify any of the growers whose fields we observed.) We took a dirt-and-gravel backroad to a field of spring mix planted near the riparian thicket of cottonwoods, willows and grasses that marks the outer edge of the Salinas {fllig}oodplain. What was striking about those plots of red and green baby lettuces were the new 8-foot-high chain-link fences installed to guard and tower above them, like some satellite yard of Soledad Prison, 20 miles north. "To keep out the deer," Martin said.
Deer were not implicated in the FDA's March 21, 2007 investigative report on the matter, which focused on cows and feral pigs roaming the ranches close to the suspect spinach plots and on conditions at the processing plant. The fencing I saw going up along river corridors of south Monterey County, much of it visible only from secondary roads, runs about $5 per foot, Martin said, or $45,000 per mile. For the bigger growers that can add up to $150,000 in new costs, not a penny of which will be paid for by their buyers and contractors, who now require it.
A boom in orders for fencing and rodent traps is part of the new world of clean farming around King City, where, as Martin points out, none of the nine E. coli outbreaks associated with Salinas Valley agriculture in the past decade have occurred. It is hotter here, he explains, and one thing scientists do know about E. coli is that, airborne, it's very unstable: It can be irradiated and neutralized by sunlight and hot winds.
Terry Palmisano, a senior wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, warns that food-safety concerns have the potential to create a 100-mile stretch of fencing on both sides of the river. If that happens, "you lose that as a corridor, a way for wildlife to come down out of the hills and cross the river," she said. "And when it {fllig}oods, the wildlife can't escape."
On June 7, Martin attended a workshop with the agency's wardens and chief biologists at the Monterey County Agricultural Center in Salinas. Scores of farmers packed the room, along with officials and representatives of industry groups and environmental agencies concerned with what's happening to Central Coast agriculture.
"Buyers are concerned about animal tracks from deer, pigs, cattle, sheep and goats," Martin told the gathering. "Say you've got a 20-acre block of head lettuce or romaine out there, and all of a sudden you're two days from harvest, and you go to the field and there's a lot of animal tracks. The deer came in the night before. They may not have done anything. They just walked through the field. But it's up to the scrutiny of the buyers, who can say: 'You know what? I don't want that deal.' So we're forced to protect our ground from these 'animals of significant risk' and put up fences. You can't [fence around] every little bend [in the river], and you don't want to forfeit a bunch of farmland that you're already using. So you're going to cut some corners in riparian habitat. Nobody wants to talk about this issue. We've never had to be concerned about this before."
Martin was a leader in voicing farmers' concerns to Western Growers as it developed its guidelines, and he now serves as a technical adviser to the organization. Over the years, he has worked with a number of nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies that seek to protect water quality in the Salinas Valley. Like many growers, he finds himself in the cross fire between environmental and food industry interests. He worries that the buyers who are demanding stricter measures are far removed from the realities and consequences of what they are asking.
His views were echoed by many growers at the Salinas workshop, including Benny Jefferson, another member of the Farm Bureau Board and chairman of the Salinas River Channel Coalition. "Anyone from Costco here?" Jefferson asked from the podium. "Wal-Mart? Safeway?" Nobody answered.
Nobody from the industry was there to help the farmers who feel trapped between food-safety guidelines they must follow to earn their livelihood and resource agencies' rules they must violate to comply with industry metrics. Nor have Fish and Game or Water Quality Board staff provided clear answers to the farmers' dilemma.
Local regulations prohibited fencing more than 6 feet high along the river until July 10, when the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, under pressure from processors, passed an "interim urgency" ordinance allowing 8-foot fences. The Monterey County Herald noted that the new ordinance waived both 50-foot setback requirements and state environmental regulations.
The pressures on growers are mounting. Vegetation removal in the name of food safety is also a concern for the California Department of Transportation, which has warned growers about encroachments on land abutting state highways. Caltrans District Director Richard Krumholtz wrote the Monterey County Farm Bureau last spring that his department had observed an increasing number of ranchers and farmers removing plant life "in direct violation of Caltrans vegetation management policies, environmental law and permits."
It's counterproductive
"The industry is still in crisis mode, and they are making tremendous errors in standards," said Kirk Schmidt, a former owner of Quail Mountain Herbs, who represents agriculture on the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary's Advisory Council. "It will take at least a year to undo the screwups before we can talk about restoring environmental requirements to the (food-safety) auditing standards. The most important single thing you can do to improve water quality is to keep the sediments on your field, and the second most important thing is keep irrigation on your fields. And that's easier with grassy buffer strips and grass roadways." Farmers along the Salinas River are being forced by the bigger produce buyers to remove these, according to Schmidt, even though such vegetative buffers mitigate the hazards of toxins, including E. coli.
"There's a ton of evidence," said Benbrook, "that buffers are effective in filtering out pesticides contained in runoff, and recent studies suggest that 40-foot-wide riparian shrubs and thick grass cover filter out large quantities of E. coli."
That view was supported in a UC Santa Cruz research brief published in fall 2006 by the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. Citing more than 80 studies, it noted that removing vegetation-based practices, such as filter and contour buffer strips, grassed waterways, vegetative barriers and constructed wetlands, "would not only reverse progress towards addressing water quality issues, but could also potentially increase the presence and transport of pathogens." Although food safety and environmental protection are interconnected, the research brief argued, they are now on a collision course in the Salinas Valley.
"Millions of dollars of taxpayer money have been invested in helping farmers develop sustainable agriculture and address non-point source pollution," said Jovita Pajarillo, associate director of EPA's Region 9 water division. "Now we're hearing horror stories about growers going out with bulldozers to remove hedgerows. You can't blame them; they've lost millions. But such practices may result in an enforcement action against them because of water-quality concerns."
Pajarillo works with the California Roundtable, a coalition of environmental groups and agencies that, along with food-safety and agricultural industry representatives, is trying to address the con{fllig}ict. They hope to bring the major buyers to the table and begin a dialogue. So far that hasn't happened.
"I see both sides digging in their heels," said Michael Payne of the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at UC Davis. "What's needed here is common sense and individualized risk assessment for a particular farm. ... Some practices are no-brainers, and others we don't have research on." Payne hopes the money that industry is now pouring into the Institute's research will help it become a meeting ground.
Benbrook was less enthusiastic about the priorities of the industry-funded research. "Are people being honest about what farmers need to do?" he asked. "I'm not super-impressed with the lack of focus on critical variables such as managing cow manure. There's been a systematic effort to leave the cattle industry out of the dialogue. 'Let's not look under that rock.' And that's ridiculous. ... There's no feral pig lobby, and pigs are a convenient scapegoat for this. Let's learn something new about this bacterium [E. coli 0157:H7] and find some different ways to prevent and deal with it."
The science of how E. coli gets into produce is still in its infancy. According to Linda Harris, a UC Davis food-safety researcher, "It's less than a decade old." She believes that "we will never eliminate food-borne illness entirely." Meanwhile, the con{fllig}ict between food safety and environmental protection has left Central Coast growers twisting in the wind.
If and when the next outbreak occurs, will the onus again be put on them?
E. coli Updates Nearly a year after the 2006 spinach recall, Dole was involved in another E. coli outbreak. Last September, it issued its own voluntary recall of more than 5,000 bags labeled Dole Hearts Delight after a random screening of the packaged salad mix in Canada tested positive for E. coli 0157:H7. Although they refused to name the source fields, Dole officials confirmed that Salinas-grown product had been mixed with butter lettuce from Ohio and romaine from Colorado. The outbreak spotlights the problem of some packaged produce available in the nation's supermarkets. FDA data from multiple outbreaks since 1999 show that 98.5 percent of the E. coli 0157:H7 illnesses associated with California leafy greens have been traced to processed, packaged, so-called "ready-to-eat" produce. Meanwhile, Western Growers' President Thomas A. Nassif has challenged a rival set of food safety standards developed by the Food Safety Leadership Council as "excessive and scientifically indefensible." The council includes representatives from such retail giants and food-service providers as McDonald's Corp., Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Publix Super Markets and the Walt Disney World Co. In a November letter to Publix, Nassif warned that the council's standard "marks the beginning of a destructive food safety 'arms race' " with different produce buyers competing by claiming they have safer products than the next and imposing ever more stringent standards on growers. These so-called "super-metrics" are at the heart of the controversy for growers and conservationists. The USDA is now considering national regulations for leafy greens. In response, directors of EPA region 9 and two Regional Water Quality Boards wrote that any such regulation should focus on bagged "ready-to-eat" greens only and cited the FDA data on E. coli outbreaks. The letters also noted that despite acceptance of the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, many chain grocery stores have imposed their own food safety programs that go beyond it. As a consequence "farmers are being put in jeopardy for violating long-standing regulations that protect water quality and threatened and endangered species," wrote EPA Water Division director Alexis Strauss. Small farmers, Strauss added, have largely been left out of the discussion. Their "needs and circumstances must also be considered to avoid the damage of an irrelevant one-size-fits-all approach" to food safety. The EPA calls the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement standards an ideal starting point for a national program; it has also called for caps on what retailers can require of growers beyond the standards. For background on E. coli and up-to-date information on outbreaks: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: www.cdc.gov/ecoli . For more on how food safety impacts small farmers and conservation efforts: Community Alliance with Family Farmers: www.caff.org . Jovita Pajarillo, assistant director, water division, EPA Region 9: Pajarillo.jovita@epamail.com . -C.N.
Carl Nagin is a Berkeley reporter whose work has appeared in the New Yorker and on the PBS documentary series "Frontline." An earlier version of this story appeared recently in California Coast & Ocean, www.coastandocean.org. E-mail magazine@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page P - 12 of the San Francisco Chronicle
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/16/CMMQSSF81.DTL
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
California Should Not Wait for More Deaths from E. Coli Before Policing
September 19, 2007. Topic: Food Safety
California Should Not Wait for More Deaths from E. Coli Before Policing
Leafy Greens Industry
Time for California to Enter the 21st Century
By Frank D. Russo
Fortunately, as far as we know, no one has died, and there are no reported illnesses from the latest discovery of the dangerous E. coli bacteria found in packages of Dole lettuce by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Monday that has resulted in a recall of lettuce in Canada and Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and other states here in the U.S. The mix of lettuce that was recalled was not sold in California.
We now know, only as of yesterday, that two of the lettuces in this mix produced in Ohio came from the Salinas Valley. That was reported late yesterday by the Oakland Tribune and came as an admission by Dole Fresh Vegetables president Eric Schwartz. But in the article, Schwartz refuses to identify the fields where the lettuce was grown, because of an ongoing investigation by the Federal Food and Drug Administration.
As we wait for more definitive information on the source of the deadly E. coli, Dean Florez, Chair of the California Senate Select Committee on Food-borne Illness, is clearly frustrated that a years worth of industry-professed progress since the deadly E. coli outbreaks of 2006 has failed to create a traceback system that can immediately identify where the contaminated produce originated.
Dole was on TV in California this spring saying they had a computer chip in each box that would allow them to trace a head of lettuce to a 30x50 space within a field, yet here we are days into a recall impacting industry and consumers in two nations, and we have only narrowed the source down to three states, Florez said. There is quite a bit of discrepancy between what consumers are being promised and what is being delivered when it comes to food safety.
Ultimately, Florez noted, it was once again government -- and not the market forces touted by industry -- which caught the contaminated produce once it had reached stores in Canada and several U.S. states, hopefully containing an outbreak before anyone became seriously ill. Infection by E. coli bacteria can lead to permanent kidney damage or even death, particularly in vulnerable populations such as the elderly and very young children.
Monday, Florez called on the secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture for answers. Along with the rest of us, he's still waiting. The silence from the CDFA is deafening. And there is nothing I can find on their site.
The lack of information is exemplified by a comment by John Baillie, a local packer in Monday's Monterey Herald:"We're all walking on this ice already because they don't even know where the E. coli comes from. We're on pins and needles, and we don't need this."
After two outbreaks of E. coli from California leafy greens killed at least three people and sickened hundreds nationwide in 2006, Florez authored legislation to regulate the industry, establishing clear standards for best agricultural practices, increasing in-field inspections and creating the standard for an effective traceback system to prevent an industry-wide economic hit such as was the case in 2006.
Florez has a package of legislation that has already passed the California
Senate but is bottled up in the Assembly Agriculture Committee, just a few
votes from going to the Governor:
SB 200 allows the Department of Health Services to recall or destroy
produce that may pose a threat to public health and creates an inspection
program to proactively address the threat of outbreaks.
SB 201 mandates good agricultural practices for growers of leafy greens--from worker hygiene to the creation of buffer zones between fields and potential contamination sources--such as sources that may have been responsible in a 2006 outbreak.
SB 202 calls for the creation of a traceback system that would spare growers from the financial pain felt in 2006 when all leafy greens were suspect due to the actions of one small farm. Under an effective traceback system, the specifics lots containing suspect produce could be isolated and destroyed.
The leafy green industry fought the legislation and pushed for a voluntary food safety program. Despite the industrys previous failure to act on multiple warnings from the Food and Drug Administration regarding nearly two dozen outbreaks, the Assembly Agriculture Committee shelved Florezs legislation in favor of giving industry one more chance to self-police.
In the end, it is government which is ultimately responsible for protecting the health of the public and which has proven itself the last line of defense between industry and consumers, Florez said, adding, We shouldnt be constrained in our efforts to do our job of protecting the public by a hodge-podge of standards and practices by individual companies whose end goal is profit.
I am very concerned that any produce subject to the leafy greens marketing
agreement could make it not only to store shelves but into a foreign
nations distribution system before contamination was found, Florez said.
If this is California produce, we will expect to see that an effective
traceback system was in place to allow us to determine exactly what
happened and who is responsible, as promised in the LGMA. Im sure the
public is as interested as I am in seeing what type of penalties will be
applied under the marketing agreement to effect real change in industry
behavior.
Less than three weeks ago, California grower Metz Fresh recalled 8000
cartons of spinach -- which had already been delivered to stores -- over
concerns of salmonella contamination.
Last year, it was Dole spinach from the Salinas Valley area that was the
source of an E. coli bacteria outbreak that killed 3 people and sickened
205 around the country.
The Canadian government has special requirements for the importation of
leafy greens from California which includes a declaration that it is a
signatory of the voluntary Leafy Green Marketing Agreement. It is unclear
if that has been complied with here since the lettuce was processed in Ohio.
Here is part of Florez's letter to the Secretary of the California Dept. of
Food & Agriculture:
"I am writing to express my continued concern regarding the safety of leafy
green produce grown in California. Less than three weeks have passed since
the recent salmonella contamination incident, which the Department has yet
to provide adequate response to the Committees inquiry. Today, the
Canadian Government has issued a nationwide recall of Dole Brand ready to
eat salad mix due to possible E. coli 0157:H7 contamination. It is my
understanding that the recalled produce was grown in the United States.
"I am concerned because the Canadian Government recently announced that it
would only allow the import of California leafy green produce that is
subject to the LGMA. The issuance of a nationwide recall by the Canadian
Government is also significant because during the last E. coli 0157:H7
spinach outbreak, the Canadian Government closed their market to foreign
leafy green produce. This caused a significant negative impact on
California growers. As we move forward it is clear that there is a serious
question of confidence in Californias leafy green produce industry.
"Accordingly, please identify whether the produce subject to the Canadian Governments national recall was grown in California. This should be easy to determine quickly given the LGMA requires the use of a trace-back system. This information should be provided to the Committee immediately upon determination."
We have published an article by the Director of the West Coast Office of Consumers Union: California Leafy Green Industrys Marketing Agreement Will Not Ensure Nations Salad Bowl is Safe. That article is one of many on the E. coli and other outbreaks from California grown leafy green that can be found under Food Safetyfrom the California Progress Report.
It's time for passage of the Florez legislation and for the state to play an active role on food safety. We cannot afford to wait for a future outbreak that will kill. This is in line with the reform started by Theodore Roosevelt and his contemporaries and spawned by Upton Sinclair's, The Jungle a century ago. It is hard to believe that in the 21st Century, in California, that there are those who are so anti-government in office that they will not have our state perform one of it's most basic functions--protect Californians and others basic health in the food we eat.
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/09/california_shou_4.html
California Should Not Wait for More Deaths from E. Coli Before Policing
Leafy Greens Industry
Time for California to Enter the 21st Century
By Frank D. Russo
Fortunately, as far as we know, no one has died, and there are no reported illnesses from the latest discovery of the dangerous E. coli bacteria found in packages of Dole lettuce by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Monday that has resulted in a recall of lettuce in Canada and Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and other states here in the U.S. The mix of lettuce that was recalled was not sold in California.
We now know, only as of yesterday, that two of the lettuces in this mix produced in Ohio came from the Salinas Valley. That was reported late yesterday by the Oakland Tribune and came as an admission by Dole Fresh Vegetables president Eric Schwartz. But in the article, Schwartz refuses to identify the fields where the lettuce was grown, because of an ongoing investigation by the Federal Food and Drug Administration.
As we wait for more definitive information on the source of the deadly E. coli, Dean Florez, Chair of the California Senate Select Committee on Food-borne Illness, is clearly frustrated that a years worth of industry-professed progress since the deadly E. coli outbreaks of 2006 has failed to create a traceback system that can immediately identify where the contaminated produce originated.
Dole was on TV in California this spring saying they had a computer chip in each box that would allow them to trace a head of lettuce to a 30x50 space within a field, yet here we are days into a recall impacting industry and consumers in two nations, and we have only narrowed the source down to three states, Florez said. There is quite a bit of discrepancy between what consumers are being promised and what is being delivered when it comes to food safety.
Ultimately, Florez noted, it was once again government -- and not the market forces touted by industry -- which caught the contaminated produce once it had reached stores in Canada and several U.S. states, hopefully containing an outbreak before anyone became seriously ill. Infection by E. coli bacteria can lead to permanent kidney damage or even death, particularly in vulnerable populations such as the elderly and very young children.
Monday, Florez called on the secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture for answers. Along with the rest of us, he's still waiting. The silence from the CDFA is deafening. And there is nothing I can find on their site.
The lack of information is exemplified by a comment by John Baillie, a local packer in Monday's Monterey Herald:"We're all walking on this ice already because they don't even know where the E. coli comes from. We're on pins and needles, and we don't need this."
After two outbreaks of E. coli from California leafy greens killed at least three people and sickened hundreds nationwide in 2006, Florez authored legislation to regulate the industry, establishing clear standards for best agricultural practices, increasing in-field inspections and creating the standard for an effective traceback system to prevent an industry-wide economic hit such as was the case in 2006.
Florez has a package of legislation that has already passed the California
Senate but is bottled up in the Assembly Agriculture Committee, just a few
votes from going to the Governor:
SB 200 allows the Department of Health Services to recall or destroy
produce that may pose a threat to public health and creates an inspection
program to proactively address the threat of outbreaks.
SB 201 mandates good agricultural practices for growers of leafy greens--from worker hygiene to the creation of buffer zones between fields and potential contamination sources--such as sources that may have been responsible in a 2006 outbreak.
SB 202 calls for the creation of a traceback system that would spare growers from the financial pain felt in 2006 when all leafy greens were suspect due to the actions of one small farm. Under an effective traceback system, the specifics lots containing suspect produce could be isolated and destroyed.
The leafy green industry fought the legislation and pushed for a voluntary food safety program. Despite the industrys previous failure to act on multiple warnings from the Food and Drug Administration regarding nearly two dozen outbreaks, the Assembly Agriculture Committee shelved Florezs legislation in favor of giving industry one more chance to self-police.
In the end, it is government which is ultimately responsible for protecting the health of the public and which has proven itself the last line of defense between industry and consumers, Florez said, adding, We shouldnt be constrained in our efforts to do our job of protecting the public by a hodge-podge of standards and practices by individual companies whose end goal is profit.
I am very concerned that any produce subject to the leafy greens marketing
agreement could make it not only to store shelves but into a foreign
nations distribution system before contamination was found, Florez said.
If this is California produce, we will expect to see that an effective
traceback system was in place to allow us to determine exactly what
happened and who is responsible, as promised in the LGMA. Im sure the
public is as interested as I am in seeing what type of penalties will be
applied under the marketing agreement to effect real change in industry
behavior.
Less than three weeks ago, California grower Metz Fresh recalled 8000
cartons of spinach -- which had already been delivered to stores -- over
concerns of salmonella contamination.
Last year, it was Dole spinach from the Salinas Valley area that was the
source of an E. coli bacteria outbreak that killed 3 people and sickened
205 around the country.
The Canadian government has special requirements for the importation of
leafy greens from California which includes a declaration that it is a
signatory of the voluntary Leafy Green Marketing Agreement. It is unclear
if that has been complied with here since the lettuce was processed in Ohio.
Here is part of Florez's letter to the Secretary of the California Dept. of
Food & Agriculture:
"I am writing to express my continued concern regarding the safety of leafy
green produce grown in California. Less than three weeks have passed since
the recent salmonella contamination incident, which the Department has yet
to provide adequate response to the Committees inquiry. Today, the
Canadian Government has issued a nationwide recall of Dole Brand ready to
eat salad mix due to possible E. coli 0157:H7 contamination. It is my
understanding that the recalled produce was grown in the United States.
"I am concerned because the Canadian Government recently announced that it
would only allow the import of California leafy green produce that is
subject to the LGMA. The issuance of a nationwide recall by the Canadian
Government is also significant because during the last E. coli 0157:H7
spinach outbreak, the Canadian Government closed their market to foreign
leafy green produce. This caused a significant negative impact on
California growers. As we move forward it is clear that there is a serious
question of confidence in Californias leafy green produce industry.
"Accordingly, please identify whether the produce subject to the Canadian Governments national recall was grown in California. This should be easy to determine quickly given the LGMA requires the use of a trace-back system. This information should be provided to the Committee immediately upon determination."
We have published an article by the Director of the West Coast Office of Consumers Union: California Leafy Green Industrys Marketing Agreement Will Not Ensure Nations Salad Bowl is Safe. That article is one of many on the E. coli and other outbreaks from California grown leafy green that can be found under Food Safetyfrom the California Progress Report.
It's time for passage of the Florez legislation and for the state to play an active role on food safety. We cannot afford to wait for a future outbreak that will kill. This is in line with the reform started by Theodore Roosevelt and his contemporaries and spawned by Upton Sinclair's, The Jungle a century ago. It is hard to believe that in the 21st Century, in California, that there are those who are so anti-government in office that they will not have our state perform one of it's most basic functions--protect Californians and others basic health in the food we eat.
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/09/california_shou_4.html
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)
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)
COUNTY LETTUCE IN RECALLED SALAD BAGS
Mixed with greens from Colorado, Ohio
By MARIE VASARI
Herald Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 09/19/2007 01:27:28 AM PDT
Two of the three lettuce varieties in a Dole bagged salad mix, recalled this week because of the presence of E. coli, were grown in the Salinas Valley. Dole Fresh Vegetables president Eric Schwartz confirmed Tuesday that the romaine and green leaf
lettuce in its Hearts Delight salad mix were farmed locally and mixed with butter lettuce from Ohio and romaine from growers in Colorado.
The lettuces, recalled in nine states and in Canada, were processed at Dole's plant in Springfield, Ohio, on Sept. 6, said Schwartz. Eighty-eight cases — 528 bags — were distributed in Canada, and 755 cases containing 4,530 bags were distributed in the U.S.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Dole Food Co. issued a voluntary recall Monday, a day after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued an advisory in
Canada.
No illnesses have been reported in Canada, said Garfield Balsom, a spokesman for Canadian Food Inspection Agency Food Recall and Emergency Response. Dole has received no reports of illnesses.
While it was initially believed the product was distributed nationally across Canada, officials Tuesday narrowed the scope of the recall to eastern Canada. Balsom said the salad was shipped only to Quebec, Ontario and the Maritime provinces.
He said the agency would continue to monitor stores to verify that the recalled salad has been removed from shelves.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it would be looking to find out at what point the salad blend became contaminated and to see if other products
are affected.
"We'll go back and find the origins and determine where the product was produced and packaged," Balsom said.
Schwartz said the company, which is based in Monterey, has turned over paperwork detailing field audits, field and harvest data and shipping information to FDA investigators, and is cooperating with the agency.
The voluntary recall affects all packages of Dole's Hearts Delight salad mix sold in the United States and Canada with a "best if used by" date of Sept. 19, 2007, and a production code of A24924A or A24924B, Dole said.
The product was sold in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces in Canada, and in Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee starting about Sept. 8, said Marty Ordman, a Dole spokesman.
Schwartz declined to identify the fields where the lettuce was grown, citing the ongoing FDA investigation.
The company was notified of the preliminary test results late Friday. Schwartz said the company notified the FDA when a second test confirmed the presence of E. coli on Sunday.
Schwartz said Dole has hired an independent consultant to verify that the company followed its prescribed washing and growing processes.
Schwartz declined to place a dollar value on the recalled produce.
Dole Food Co., the parent company of Dole Fresh Vegetables, reported 2006 revenues of $6.2 billion.
On Tuesday, an industry group representing small farm operations issued harsh criticism against the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, calling the voluntary program ineffective and skewed in favor of big business.
"This shows that the industry rules are not preventing E. coli 0157:H7 recalls or outbreaks in fresh-cut, processed salad," said Judith Redmond, board president
of Community Alliance with Family Farmers and partner at Full Belly Farm in Yolo County. "The industry's measures are ineffective because we don't know exactly
how E. coli 0157:H7 is spreading. What we do know is that these recalls and outbreaks are not occurring in traditional, fresh leafy greens. The industry needs to focus their rules on the problem in processed salad, not on traditional leafy greens."
According to the organization, processed bagged salads have been at the center of most reported illnesses traced to leafy greens. It is the centralized washing and packaging of mixed produce from different farms that increases risks of cross-contamination, so efforts to stem the spread of E. coli 0157:H7 should focus on the processing and bagging industry, according to the group.
Last year, an E. coli outbreak traced to bagged baby spinach sold under the Dole brand and processed by Natural Selection Foods LLC was blamed for the deaths
of three people and for sickening hundreds of people across the U.S.
Authorities identified a San Benito County cattle ranch next to spinach fields belonging to one of Dole's suppliers as being the source of the bacteria.
FDA spokesman Michael Herndon said the agency was talking to Westlake Village-based Dole about the situation.
An inspector from the Ohio agriculture department was at the plant Monday and Tuesday, said agency spokeswoman Cindy Brown. Tests performed on lettuce at the plant by Dole and the FDA came back negative for E. coli, she said.
"They have been to our plant and they will visit the growers," said Ordman.
The salad mix subject to the recall may have been available in the U.S. in states other than the nine identified by Dole because in some areas the product was distributed by a wholesaler with clients in overlapping markets, Ordman said.
Food contaminated with this strain of E. coli may not look or smell spoiled, but health officials say the bacteria can cause life-threatening illnesses.
Symptoms include severe abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea. Some people can have seizures or strokes and some may need blood transfusions and kidney dialysis, while others may live with permanent kidney damage.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
See the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition guidelines at
www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/prodsafe.html.
By MARIE VASARI
Herald Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 09/19/2007 01:27:28 AM PDT
Two of the three lettuce varieties in a Dole bagged salad mix, recalled this week because of the presence of E. coli, were grown in the Salinas Valley. Dole Fresh Vegetables president Eric Schwartz confirmed Tuesday that the romaine and green leaf
lettuce in its Hearts Delight salad mix were farmed locally and mixed with butter lettuce from Ohio and romaine from growers in Colorado.
The lettuces, recalled in nine states and in Canada, were processed at Dole's plant in Springfield, Ohio, on Sept. 6, said Schwartz. Eighty-eight cases — 528 bags — were distributed in Canada, and 755 cases containing 4,530 bags were distributed in the U.S.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Dole Food Co. issued a voluntary recall Monday, a day after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued an advisory in
Canada.
No illnesses have been reported in Canada, said Garfield Balsom, a spokesman for Canadian Food Inspection Agency Food Recall and Emergency Response. Dole has received no reports of illnesses.
While it was initially believed the product was distributed nationally across Canada, officials Tuesday narrowed the scope of the recall to eastern Canada. Balsom said the salad was shipped only to Quebec, Ontario and the Maritime provinces.
He said the agency would continue to monitor stores to verify that the recalled salad has been removed from shelves.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it would be looking to find out at what point the salad blend became contaminated and to see if other products
are affected.
"We'll go back and find the origins and determine where the product was produced and packaged," Balsom said.
Schwartz said the company, which is based in Monterey, has turned over paperwork detailing field audits, field and harvest data and shipping information to FDA investigators, and is cooperating with the agency.
The voluntary recall affects all packages of Dole's Hearts Delight salad mix sold in the United States and Canada with a "best if used by" date of Sept. 19, 2007, and a production code of A24924A or A24924B, Dole said.
The product was sold in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces in Canada, and in Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee starting about Sept. 8, said Marty Ordman, a Dole spokesman.
Schwartz declined to identify the fields where the lettuce was grown, citing the ongoing FDA investigation.
The company was notified of the preliminary test results late Friday. Schwartz said the company notified the FDA when a second test confirmed the presence of E. coli on Sunday.
Schwartz said Dole has hired an independent consultant to verify that the company followed its prescribed washing and growing processes.
Schwartz declined to place a dollar value on the recalled produce.
Dole Food Co., the parent company of Dole Fresh Vegetables, reported 2006 revenues of $6.2 billion.
On Tuesday, an industry group representing small farm operations issued harsh criticism against the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, calling the voluntary program ineffective and skewed in favor of big business.
"This shows that the industry rules are not preventing E. coli 0157:H7 recalls or outbreaks in fresh-cut, processed salad," said Judith Redmond, board president
of Community Alliance with Family Farmers and partner at Full Belly Farm in Yolo County. "The industry's measures are ineffective because we don't know exactly
how E. coli 0157:H7 is spreading. What we do know is that these recalls and outbreaks are not occurring in traditional, fresh leafy greens. The industry needs to focus their rules on the problem in processed salad, not on traditional leafy greens."
According to the organization, processed bagged salads have been at the center of most reported illnesses traced to leafy greens. It is the centralized washing and packaging of mixed produce from different farms that increases risks of cross-contamination, so efforts to stem the spread of E. coli 0157:H7 should focus on the processing and bagging industry, according to the group.
Last year, an E. coli outbreak traced to bagged baby spinach sold under the Dole brand and processed by Natural Selection Foods LLC was blamed for the deaths
of three people and for sickening hundreds of people across the U.S.
Authorities identified a San Benito County cattle ranch next to spinach fields belonging to one of Dole's suppliers as being the source of the bacteria.
FDA spokesman Michael Herndon said the agency was talking to Westlake Village-based Dole about the situation.
An inspector from the Ohio agriculture department was at the plant Monday and Tuesday, said agency spokeswoman Cindy Brown. Tests performed on lettuce at the plant by Dole and the FDA came back negative for E. coli, she said.
"They have been to our plant and they will visit the growers," said Ordman.
The salad mix subject to the recall may have been available in the U.S. in states other than the nine identified by Dole because in some areas the product was distributed by a wholesaler with clients in overlapping markets, Ordman said.
Food contaminated with this strain of E. coli may not look or smell spoiled, but health officials say the bacteria can cause life-threatening illnesses.
Symptoms include severe abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea. Some people can have seizures or strokes and some may need blood transfusions and kidney dialysis, while others may live with permanent kidney damage.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
See the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition guidelines at
www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/prodsafe.html.
Florez upset exact source of E. coli not known
The Bakersfield Californian | Tuesday, Sep 18 2007
11:25 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Sep 18 2007 11:29 PM
State Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, expressed
frustration Tuesday that a year after deadly E. coli
outbreaks, there's no system to immediately identify
where contaminated produce came from.
Florez has asked for -- and says he's still waiting to
hear back on -- the source of lettuce responsible for
a recent international recall of U.S.-grown Dole-brand
bagged salad mix.
"Dole was on TV in California this spring saying they
had a computer chip in each box that would allow them
to trace a head of lettuce to a 30-by-50-foot space
within a field, yet here we are days into a recall
impacting industry and consumers in two nations, and
we have only narrowed the source down to three
states," he said in a news release. "There is quite a
bit of discrepancy between what consumers are being
promised and what is being delivered when it comes to
food safety."
Last year, Florez wrote legislation establishing
standards for best agricultural practices, increasing
field inspections and starting a traceback system.
The leafy green industry instead argued for a
"voluntary food safety program" and an Assembly
committee shelved legislation to give industry a
chance to self-regulate, he said.
http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/239923.html
11:25 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Sep 18 2007 11:29 PM
State Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, expressed
frustration Tuesday that a year after deadly E. coli
outbreaks, there's no system to immediately identify
where contaminated produce came from.
Florez has asked for -- and says he's still waiting to
hear back on -- the source of lettuce responsible for
a recent international recall of U.S.-grown Dole-brand
bagged salad mix.
"Dole was on TV in California this spring saying they
had a computer chip in each box that would allow them
to trace a head of lettuce to a 30-by-50-foot space
within a field, yet here we are days into a recall
impacting industry and consumers in two nations, and
we have only narrowed the source down to three
states," he said in a news release. "There is quite a
bit of discrepancy between what consumers are being
promised and what is being delivered when it comes to
food safety."
Last year, Florez wrote legislation establishing
standards for best agricultural practices, increasing
field inspections and starting a traceback system.
The leafy green industry instead argued for a
"voluntary food safety program" and an Assembly
committee shelved legislation to give industry a
chance to self-regulate, he said.
http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/239923.html
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
E. COLI FOUND; DOLE RECALLS SALADS
Packages pulled in Canada, U.S.; no illnesses reported
By MARIE VASARI
Herald Staff Writer
Monterey County Herald
Article Last Updated:
E. coli contamination in a bag of packaged salad in Canada has prompted a recall of certain Dole salads in the United States and Canada.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a warning late Sunday against eating Dole brand Hearts Delight lettuce salad, a ready-to-eat blend of romaine, green leaf and butter lettuce hearts, after a sample taken from a store in Canada tested positive for E. coli.
Dole Fresh Vegetables, based in Monterey, extended the voluntary recall to U.S. consumers on Monday afternoon, through a statement on its Web site.
No illnesses had been reported Monday, said the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Dole officials.
The voluntary recall involves all salad bearing the label "Dole Hearts Delight" sold in the U.S. and Canada with a "best if used by" date of Sept. 19, 2007, and a production code of "A24924A" or "A24924B" stamped on the package. The "best if used by (BIUB)" code date is in the upper right hand corner of the front of the bag. The salad was sold in plastic bags of 227 grams in Canada and a half pound in the U.S., with UPC code 071430-01038.
The product was sold in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime Provinces in Canada, and in Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and neighboring U.S. states starting the weekend before last, said Marty Ordman, a Dole spokesman.
The romaine, green leaf and butter lettuce hearts that went into the blend were grown in California, Colorado and Ohio, then processed at Dole's plant in Springfield, Ohio, on Sept. 6, said Ordman.
Eighty-eight cases — or 528 bags — were distributed in Canada and 755 cases containing 4,530 bags in the U.S., he said.
Infection with E. coli often leads to bloody diarrhea, and occasionally to kidney failure, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Concern for safety|
"Our overriding concern is for consumer safety," Eric Schwartz, president of the Dole Fresh Vegetable division of Dole Food Co., said in a statement. He said the company was working with U.S. and Canadian health agencies, as well as those in various states.
The Food and Drug Administration was talking with Westlake Village-based Dole about the situation, agency spokesman Michael Herndon said.
The Canadian agency said it would be looking to find out at what point the salad blend, which is imported into Canada, became contaminated and to see if any other products are affected, spokesman Garfield Balsom said.
The Dole recall is the second major recall in less than a month involving fresh packaged leafy greens. King City-based Metz Fresh LLC issued a voluntary recall involving 8,118 cases of bagged spinach on Aug. 28 after lab tests confirmed the presence of salmonella. No illnesses were reported in that recall, which involved 68,000 pounds of spinach and was handled in conjunction with U.S. and state agencies.
Metz Fresh President Andy Cummings was unavailable for comment Monday.
But the company's publicist, Greg Larsen, said the investigation as to what caused the contamination continues.
Last year, an E. coli outbreak traced to bagged baby spinach was blamed for the deaths of three people and for sickening hundreds more across the U.S. State and federal authorities ultimately identified a Central California cattle ranch next to spinach fields belonging to one of Dole's suppliers as being the source of the bacteria.
John Baillie of Baillie-TriCounty Packing said the Canadian government's advisory is a blow to an industry already struggling under seemingly insurmountable odds these days.
"We're all walking on this ice already because they don't even know where the E. coli comes from," said Baillie. "We're on pins and needles, and we don't need this."
Senator wants information|
One of those accusers, Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Food-borne Illness, called upon California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura for details as to whether the lettuce was grown in California and if the grower was a signatory to the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, a set of best practices developed by the industry to safeguard food safety.
Florez has been critical of what he calls the California leafy green industry's "self-regulatory" plan, having drafted legislation to regulate the industry following last year's widespread spinach recall.
"If this is California produce, we will expect to see that an effective traceback system was in place to allow us to determine exactly what happened and who is responsible," as promised in the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, Florez said in a statement. "I'm sure the public is as interested as I am in seeing what type of penalties will be applied under the marketing agreement to effect real change in industry behavior."
But Monterey County Farm Bureau executive director Bob Perkins said Florez isn't providing any real solutions.
"He is not offering anything that would improve food safety," he said.
Perkins charged that Florez's call for fundamental change and penalties ignores the fact that the industry already has undergone radical changes since last year's E. coli outbreak in spinach. The Canadian recall, as well as last month's recall of Metz Fresh spinach, were the result of product testing rather than reported illnesses, he said.
"Nobody in the system is willing to take changes," said Perkins. "We're all reacting by possibly going overboard, but that's another indication as to how things have changed since a year or more ago."
He said government has the ability to punish companies for negligence; otherwise, consumers ultimately levy judgment against a company or industry by their buying choices.
"He's already talking about penalties before we have any idea where the bacteria came from," said Perkins. "Dole's brand name is already being punished by this. It's hurting their brand, it's hurting their value, it's taking real value out of their pockets."
"That's a bad bug, and I'm sorry to see that in the food supply anywhere," said Perkins. "I certainly hope that no one has become ill because of this bacteria."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Marie Vasari can be reached at 646-4478 or mvasari@montereyherald.com.http://www.dole.com/CompanyInfo/SafeSalad/LatestNews_PR.jsp
http://www.montereyherald.com/ci_6925229?nclick_check=1
By MARIE VASARI
Herald Staff Writer
Monterey County Herald
Article Last Updated:
E. coli contamination in a bag of packaged salad in Canada has prompted a recall of certain Dole salads in the United States and Canada.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a warning late Sunday against eating Dole brand Hearts Delight lettuce salad, a ready-to-eat blend of romaine, green leaf and butter lettuce hearts, after a sample taken from a store in Canada tested positive for E. coli.
Dole Fresh Vegetables, based in Monterey, extended the voluntary recall to U.S. consumers on Monday afternoon, through a statement on its Web site.
No illnesses had been reported Monday, said the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Dole officials.
The voluntary recall involves all salad bearing the label "Dole Hearts Delight" sold in the U.S. and Canada with a "best if used by" date of Sept. 19, 2007, and a production code of "A24924A" or "A24924B" stamped on the package. The "best if used by (BIUB)" code date is in the upper right hand corner of the front of the bag. The salad was sold in plastic bags of 227 grams in Canada and a half pound in the U.S., with UPC code 071430-01038.
The product was sold in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime Provinces in Canada, and in Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and neighboring U.S. states starting the weekend before last, said Marty Ordman, a Dole spokesman.
The romaine, green leaf and butter lettuce hearts that went into the blend were grown in California, Colorado and Ohio, then processed at Dole's plant in Springfield, Ohio, on Sept. 6, said Ordman.
Eighty-eight cases — or 528 bags — were distributed in Canada and 755 cases containing 4,530 bags in the U.S., he said.
Infection with E. coli often leads to bloody diarrhea, and occasionally to kidney failure, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Concern for safety|
"Our overriding concern is for consumer safety," Eric Schwartz, president of the Dole Fresh Vegetable division of Dole Food Co., said in a statement. He said the company was working with U.S. and Canadian health agencies, as well as those in various states.
The Food and Drug Administration was talking with Westlake Village-based Dole about the situation, agency spokesman Michael Herndon said.
The Canadian agency said it would be looking to find out at what point the salad blend, which is imported into Canada, became contaminated and to see if any other products are affected, spokesman Garfield Balsom said.
The Dole recall is the second major recall in less than a month involving fresh packaged leafy greens. King City-based Metz Fresh LLC issued a voluntary recall involving 8,118 cases of bagged spinach on Aug. 28 after lab tests confirmed the presence of salmonella. No illnesses were reported in that recall, which involved 68,000 pounds of spinach and was handled in conjunction with U.S. and state agencies.
Metz Fresh President Andy Cummings was unavailable for comment Monday.
But the company's publicist, Greg Larsen, said the investigation as to what caused the contamination continues.
Last year, an E. coli outbreak traced to bagged baby spinach was blamed for the deaths of three people and for sickening hundreds more across the U.S. State and federal authorities ultimately identified a Central California cattle ranch next to spinach fields belonging to one of Dole's suppliers as being the source of the bacteria.
John Baillie of Baillie-TriCounty Packing said the Canadian government's advisory is a blow to an industry already struggling under seemingly insurmountable odds these days.
"We're all walking on this ice already because they don't even know where the E. coli comes from," said Baillie. "We're on pins and needles, and we don't need this."
Senator wants information|
One of those accusers, Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Food-borne Illness, called upon California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura for details as to whether the lettuce was grown in California and if the grower was a signatory to the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, a set of best practices developed by the industry to safeguard food safety.
Florez has been critical of what he calls the California leafy green industry's "self-regulatory" plan, having drafted legislation to regulate the industry following last year's widespread spinach recall.
"If this is California produce, we will expect to see that an effective traceback system was in place to allow us to determine exactly what happened and who is responsible," as promised in the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, Florez said in a statement. "I'm sure the public is as interested as I am in seeing what type of penalties will be applied under the marketing agreement to effect real change in industry behavior."
But Monterey County Farm Bureau executive director Bob Perkins said Florez isn't providing any real solutions.
"He is not offering anything that would improve food safety," he said.
Perkins charged that Florez's call for fundamental change and penalties ignores the fact that the industry already has undergone radical changes since last year's E. coli outbreak in spinach. The Canadian recall, as well as last month's recall of Metz Fresh spinach, were the result of product testing rather than reported illnesses, he said.
"Nobody in the system is willing to take changes," said Perkins. "We're all reacting by possibly going overboard, but that's another indication as to how things have changed since a year or more ago."
He said government has the ability to punish companies for negligence; otherwise, consumers ultimately levy judgment against a company or industry by their buying choices.
"He's already talking about penalties before we have any idea where the bacteria came from," said Perkins. "Dole's brand name is already being punished by this. It's hurting their brand, it's hurting their value, it's taking real value out of their pockets."
"That's a bad bug, and I'm sorry to see that in the food supply anywhere," said Perkins. "I certainly hope that no one has become ill because of this bacteria."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Marie Vasari can be reached at 646-4478 or mvasari@montereyherald.com.http://www.dole.com/CompanyInfo/SafeSalad/LatestNews_PR.jsp
http://www.montereyherald.com/ci_6925229?nclick_check=1
Dole recalls salad mix in E. coli scare
By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer
Tue Sep 18, 6:37 AM ET
A package of Dole salad mix that tested positive for E. coli has triggered a recall in at least nine states, prompting new produce fears almost exactly a year after a nationwide spinach scare.
The tainted bag of Dole's Hearts Delight salad mix was sold at a store in Canada, officials said. Neither Canadian health officials nor Dole Food Co. have received reports of anyone getting sick from the product.
The voluntary recall, issued Monday, affects all packages of Hearts Delight sold in the United States and Canada with a "best if used by" date of September 19, 2007, and a production code of "A24924A" or "A24924B," the company said.
Last year, an E. coli outbreak traced to bagged baby spinach sold under the Dole brand was blamed for the deaths of three people and for sickening hundreds more
across the U.S. Authorities ultimately identified a central California cattle ranch next to spinach fields belonging to one of Dole's suppliers as being the source of the bacteria.
The latest recall affects packages sold in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime Provinces in Canada and in Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New
York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee starting around Sept. 8, said Marty Ordman, a Dole spokesman.
Eighty-eight cases — or 528 bags — were distributed in Canada, and 755 cases containing 4,530 bags were distributed in the U.S., he said. FDA spokesman Michael Herndon said the agency was talking with Westlake Village, Calif.-based Dole about the situation.
The romaine, green leaf and butter lettuce hearts that went into the blend were grown in California, Colorado and Ohio, then processed at Dole's plant in Springfield, Ohio, on Sept. 6, according to Ordman.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it would be looking to find out at what point the salad blend became contaminated and to see if any other products
are affected, spokesman Garfield Balsom said. "We'll go back and find the origins and determine where the product was produced and packaged," Balsom said.
Dole contacted the FDA on Sunday night, as soon as the company got word of the contaminated bag of salad in Canada, said Ordman. "They have been to our plant and
they will visit the growers," he said.
The salad mix subject to the recall may have been available in the U.S. in states other than the nine already identified by Dole because in some areas the product was distributed by a wholesaler with clients in overlapping markets, Ordman said.
Food contaminated with this strain of E. coli may not look or smell spoiled but health officials say the bacteria can cause life-threatening illnesses.
Symptoms include severe abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea; some people can have seizures or strokes and some may need blood transfusions and kidney dialysis,
while others may live with permanent kidney damage.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/lettuce_recall;_ylt=AiFCLvhID1Hy3RJyHDWIukwDW7oF
Tue Sep 18, 6:37 AM ET
A package of Dole salad mix that tested positive for E. coli has triggered a recall in at least nine states, prompting new produce fears almost exactly a year after a nationwide spinach scare.
The tainted bag of Dole's Hearts Delight salad mix was sold at a store in Canada, officials said. Neither Canadian health officials nor Dole Food Co. have received reports of anyone getting sick from the product.
The voluntary recall, issued Monday, affects all packages of Hearts Delight sold in the United States and Canada with a "best if used by" date of September 19, 2007, and a production code of "A24924A" or "A24924B," the company said.
Last year, an E. coli outbreak traced to bagged baby spinach sold under the Dole brand was blamed for the deaths of three people and for sickening hundreds more
across the U.S. Authorities ultimately identified a central California cattle ranch next to spinach fields belonging to one of Dole's suppliers as being the source of the bacteria.
The latest recall affects packages sold in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime Provinces in Canada and in Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New
York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee starting around Sept. 8, said Marty Ordman, a Dole spokesman.
Eighty-eight cases — or 528 bags — were distributed in Canada, and 755 cases containing 4,530 bags were distributed in the U.S., he said. FDA spokesman Michael Herndon said the agency was talking with Westlake Village, Calif.-based Dole about the situation.
The romaine, green leaf and butter lettuce hearts that went into the blend were grown in California, Colorado and Ohio, then processed at Dole's plant in Springfield, Ohio, on Sept. 6, according to Ordman.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it would be looking to find out at what point the salad blend became contaminated and to see if any other products
are affected, spokesman Garfield Balsom said. "We'll go back and find the origins and determine where the product was produced and packaged," Balsom said.
Dole contacted the FDA on Sunday night, as soon as the company got word of the contaminated bag of salad in Canada, said Ordman. "They have been to our plant and
they will visit the growers," he said.
The salad mix subject to the recall may have been available in the U.S. in states other than the nine already identified by Dole because in some areas the product was distributed by a wholesaler with clients in overlapping markets, Ordman said.
Food contaminated with this strain of E. coli may not look or smell spoiled but health officials say the bacteria can cause life-threatening illnesses.
Symptoms include severe abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea; some people can have seizures or strokes and some may need blood transfusions and kidney dialysis,
while others may live with permanent kidney damage.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/lettuce_recall;_ylt=AiFCLvhID1Hy3RJyHDWIukwDW7oF
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
