Food poisoning
suspected at kids’ summer program
Crops, ponds
destroyed in quest for food safety Source of
Article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/07/13/MN0218DVJ8.DTL Monday,
July 13, 2009 (07-13)
04:00 PDT Washington
-- Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his
organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor
beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides. He
has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big
customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water.
No wildlife of any kind. "I
was driving by a field where a squirrel fed off the end of the field, and so
30 feet in we had to destroy the crop," he said. "On one field
where a deer walked through, didn't eat anything, just walked through and you
could see the tracks, we had to take out 30 feet on each side of the tracks
and annihilate the crop." In
the verdant farmland surrounding Monterey Bay, a national marine sanctuary
and one of the world's biological jewels, scorched-earth strategies are being
imposed on hundreds of thousands of acres in the quest for an antiseptic
field of greens. And the scheme is about to go national. Invisible
to a public that sees only the headlines of the latest food-safety scare -
spinach, peppers and now cookie dough - ponds are being poisoned and
bulldozed. Vegetation harboring pollinators and filtering storm runoff is
being cleared. Fences and poison baits line wildlife corridors. Birds, frogs,
mice and deer - and anything that shelters them - are caught in a raging
battle in the Salinas Valley against E. coli O157:H7, a lethal, food-borne
bacteria. In
pending legislation and in proposed federal regulations, the push for food
safety butts up against the movement toward biologically diverse farming
methods, while evidence suggests that industrial agriculture may be the
bigger culprit. 'Foolhardy'
approach
"Sanitizing
American agriculture, aside from being impossible, is foolhardy," said
UC Berkeley food guru Michael Pollan, who most recently made his case for
smaller-scale farming in the documentary film "Food, Inc."
"You have to think about what's the logical end point of looking at food
this way. It's food grown indoors hydroponically." Scientists
do not know how the killer E. coli pathogen, which dwells mainly in the guts
of cattle, made its way to a spinach field near San Juan Bautista (San Benito
County) in 2006, leaving four people dead, 35 with acute kidney failure and
103 hospitalized. The
deadly bug first appeared in hamburger meat in the early 1980s and migrated
to certain kinds of produce, mainly lettuce and other leafy greens that are
cut, mixed and bagged for the convenience of supermarket shoppers. Hundreds
of thousands of the bug can fit on the head of a pin; as few as 10 can lodge
in a salad and end in lifelong disability, including organ failure. Going national
For
many giant food retailers, the choice between a dead pond and a dead child is
no choice at all. Industry has paid more than $100 million in court
settlements and verdicts in spinach and lettuce lawsuits, a fraction of the
lost sales involved. Galvanized
by the spinach disaster, large growers instituted a quasi-governmental
program of new protocols for growing greens safely, called the "leafy
greens marketing agreement." A proposal was submitted last month in
Washington to take these rules nationwide. A
food safety bill sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, passed this
month in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It would give new powers to
the Food and Drug Administration to regulate all farms and produce in an
attempt to fix the problem. The bill would require consideration of farm
diversity and environmental rules, but would leave much to the FDA. An
Amish farmer in Ohio who uses horses to plow his fields could find himself
caught in a net aimed 2,000 miles away at a feral pig in San Benito County.
While he may pick, pack and sell his greens in one day because he does not
refrigerate, the bagged lettuce trucked from Salinas with a 17-day shelf life
may be considered safer. The
leafy-green agreement is based on available science, but it is just a
jumping-off point. Large
produce buyers have compiled secret "super metrics" that go much
further. Farmers must follow them if they expect to sell their crops. These
can include vast bare-dirt buffers, elimination of wildlife, and strict rules
on water sources. To enforce these rules, retail buyers have sent forth
armies of food-safety auditors, many of them trained in indoor processing
plants, to inspect fields. Keeping
children out
"They're
used to working inside the factory walls," said Ken Kimes, owner of New
Natives farms in Aptos (Santa Cruz County) and a board member of the
Community Alliance With Family Farmers, a California group. "If they're
not prepared for the farm landscape, it can come as quite a shock to them.
Some of this stuff that they want, you just can't actually do." Auditors
have told Kimes that no children younger than 5 can be allowed on his farm
for fear of diapers. He has been asked to issue identification badges to all
visitors. Not
only do the rules conflict with organic and environmental standards; many are
simply unscientific. Surprisingly little is known about how E. coli is
transmitted from cow to table. Reducing E.
coli
Scientists
have created a vaccine to reduce E. coli in livestock, and a White House
working group announced plans Tuesday to boost safety standards for eggs and
meat. This month, the group is expected to issue draft guidelines for
reducing E. coli contamination in leafy greens, tomatoes and melons. Some
science suggests that removing vegetation near field crops could make food
less safe. Vegetation and wetlands are a landscape's lungs and kidneys,
filtering out not just fertilizers, sediments and pesticides, but also
pathogens. UC Davis scientists found that vegetation buffers can remove as
much as 98 percent of E. coli from surface water. UC Davis advisers warn that
some rodents prefer cleared areas. Produce
buyers compete to demand the most draconian standards, said Jo Ann
Baumgartner, head of the Wild Farm Alliance in Watsonville, so that they can
sell their products as the "safest." State
agencies responsible for California's water, air and wildlife have been
unable to find out from buyers what they are demanding. They
do know that trees have been bulldozed along the riparian corridors of the
Salinas Valley, while poison-filled tubes targeting rodents dot lettuce
fields. Dying rodents have led to deaths of owls and hawks that naturally
control rodents. Unscientific
approach
"It's
all based on panic and fear, and the science is not there," said Dr.
Andy Gordus, an environmental scientist with the California Department of
Fish and Game. Preliminary
results released in April from a two-year study by the state wildlife agency,
UC Davis and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that less than one-half
of 1 percent of 866 wild animals tested positive for E. coli O157:H7 in
Central California. Frogs
are unrelated to E. coli, but their remains in bags of mechanically harvested
greens are unsightly, Gordus said, so "the industry has been using food
safety as a premise to eliminate frogs." Farmers
are told that ponds used to recycle irrigation water are unsafe. So they
bulldoze the ponds and pump more groundwater, opening more of the aquifer to
saltwater intrusion, said Jill Wilson, an environmental scientist at the
Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board in San Luis Obispo. Wilson
said demands for 450-foot dirt buffers remove the agency's chief means of
preventing pollution from entering streams and rivers. Jovita Pajarillo,
associate director of the water division in the San Francisco office of the
Environmental Protection Agency, said removal of vegetative buffers threatens
Arroyo Seco, one of the last remaining stretches of habitat for steelhead
trout. Turning down
clients
"It's
been a problem for us trying to balance the organic growing methods with the
food safety requirements," Peixoto said. "At some point, we can't
really meet their criteria. We just tell them that's all we can do, and we
have to turn down that customer." Large
retailers did not respond to requests for comment. Food trade groups in
Washington suggested calling other trade groups, which didn't comment. Chiquita/Fresh
Express, a large Salinas produce handler, told the advocacy group Food and
Water Watch that the company has "developed extensive additional guidelines
for the procurement of leafy greens and other produce, but we consider such
guidelines to be our confidential and proprietary information." Seattle
trial lawyer Bill Marler, who represented many of the plaintiffs in the 2006
E. coli outbreak in spinach, said, "If we want to have bagged spinach
and lettuce available 24/7, 12 months of the year, it comes with costs." Still,
he said, the industry rules won't stop lawsuits or eliminate the risk of
processed greens cut in fields, mingled in large baths, put in bags that must
be chilled from packing plant to kitchen, and shipped thousands of miles
away. "In
16 years of handling nearly every major food-borne illness outbreak in
America, I can tell you I've never had a case where it's been linked to a
farmers' market," Marler said. "Could
it happen? Absolutely. But the big problem has been the mass-produced
product. What you're seeing is this rub between trying to make it as clean as
possible so they don't poison anybody, but still not wanting to come to the
reality that it may be the industrialized process that's making it all so
risky." Some major
recent outbreaks of food-borne illness
The
Food and Drug Administration lists 40 food-borne pathogens. Among the more
common: E-coli O157:H7, salmonella, listeria, campylobacter, botulism and
hepatitis A. June
2009: E. coli
O157:H7 found in Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough manufactured in
Danville, Va., resulted in the recall of 3.6 million packages. Seventy-two
people in 30 states were sickened. No traces found on equipment or workers;
investigators are looking at flour and other ingredients. October
2008: Salmonella
found in peanut butter from a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Georgia. Nine
people died, and an estimated 22,500 were sickened. Criminal negligence was
alleged after the product tested positive and was shipped. June
2008: Salmonella
Saintpaul traced to serrano peppers grown in Mexico. More than 1,000 people
were sickened in 41 states, with 203 reported hospitalizations and at least
one death. Tomatoes were suspected, devastating growers. April
2007: E. coli
O157:H7 found in beef, sickening 14 people. United Food Group recalled 5.7
million pounds of meat. December
2006: E. coli
O157:H7 traced to Taco Bell restaurants in New Jersey and Long Island, N.Y.
Green onions suspected, then lettuce. Thirty-nine people were sickened, some
with acute kidney failure. September
2006: E. coli
O157:H7 found in Dole bagged spinach processed at Earthbound Farms in San
Juan Bautista (San Benito County). The outbreak killed four people, sent 103
to hospitals, and devastated the spinach industry. |
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