Food safetyFive years after E.coli outbreak, California farmers still struggling

Farmers in Salinas Valley, California, the “salad bowl of the United States,” are still struggling to regain consumers’ trust five years after spinach grown and bagged on a local farm was linked to a deadly E. coli outbreak that killed three people and sickened 206.

Following the outbreak, Salinas Valley farms took great pains to avoid another incident by implementing a flood of new regulations, procedures, and practices. So far their efforts have succeeded in preventing another outbreak, but have failed to reassure wary consumers, and spinach revenues continue to decline. 

Before the outbreak, in 2005, Monterey County produced more than $188 million worth of Spinach. In contrast, last year the county produced less than $128 million worth of spinach.

In 2007 members of the leafy greens industry came together to create the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, a non-binding pact that includes more stringent farming practices and government audits. More than 100 firms which handle 99 percent of California’s leafy greens have signed on.

Some farms, like Earthbound Farm, which was at the center of the 2006 outbreak, have instituted even more stringent policies.

Will Daniels, Earthbound’s vice president for food safety, said the farm goes beyond the 2007 pact’s focus on field tests and surveys. According to Daniels, Earthbound also tests greens as they arrive at the processing facility and once more after they have been washed and are about to be bagged.

In addition to the industry’s self-imposed standards, major food and retail chains like McDonald’s and WalMart have instituted their own set of regulations to ensure that the greens are as safe as possible.

These regulations include ensuring that no cattle are grazing uphill from a spinach farm, no roaming wild pigs, no farm crews without hairnets or gloves, and no missing reports.

Some retailers have gone so far as to send inspectors unannounced.

“They’ll be the Toyota Camry with the Hertz sticker on the edge of the field, looking with binoculars,” said Mike Dobler, a farmer who works with his family on a large-scale vegetable farm based in Watsonville.

“They’re looking to see if you’re doing what you say you’re doing,” Dobler said. Before September 2006, he said, “we were taken at our word, and nobody asked.”

For the most part, FDA and California Department of Public Health officials say problems have been much smaller and less frequent since the industry imposed its own set of regulations.

“We’re not seeing these large-scale outbreaks,” said Patrick Kennelly, the department’s chief of food safety.

While there have been no major outbreaks, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has still ordered recalls on California leafy greens in recent years. Most recently, on 17 November, bagged salads from a California-based packer were recalled after inspectors found E.coli in samples.

Leafy greens are particularly difficult to keep clean and away from contaminants as they are close to the ground, collect a lot of dirt, and too fragile to undergo thorough cleaning procedures like those used on hardier fruits and vegetables. In addition, consumers are eager to have fresh salads, not boiled greens.

“Remember, it’s a ready-to-eat food. We don’t cook it. We don’t can it. There’s no ‘kill’ step that’s going to reduce the number of microorganisms on it,” explained Robert Gravani, a professor of food science at Cornell University.
To improve safety, some experts and researchers are working to develop a technique that could be a kill step for fresh leafy greens.

“That’s the Holy Grail — can you kill the contaminant on the leaf?” said Jim Brennan, president of NewLeaf Food Safety Solutions, which has developed a method to make chlorinated water more effective at cleaning greens before they are bagged.

Given the new safety regulations and consumers still wary, some farmers have chosen to simply leave the industry.

“It was just more regulations. More inspections. More paperwork. More filings. More fees,” said Chris Bunn, a four-generation farmer in Salinas Valley who chose to quit two years after the 2006 outbreak.

“I miss it terribly,” Bunn said. “It was a wonderful business.”