In September 2006, raw spinach contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7 caused 200 people to become ill; 3 people died. The outbreak was traced to a 50 acre plot leased from a cattle ranch in California to a "farmer" growing organic spinach. Initially, the route by which the spinach was contaminated could not be determined. However, deer and wild pigs, as well as cattle, are known to harbor the E. coli bacterium and are known to inhabit the area in question. Additionally, irrigation wells, contaminated by waterways from the ranch, may have been a factor. The producer's processing and transportation methods were questioned, also.
The outbreak spread across the U.S.; Wisconsin reported 49 cases and 1 death. In October of that year, Wisconsin Governor Doyle requested federal aid to help deal with the outbreak.
Reports eventually showed that this 2006 outbreak of E. coli was linked to bagged fresh spinach sold by Earthbound Farms and processed by Natural Selections Foods of California.
In an interview discussing the contamination, then director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Julie Gerberding, M.D. said, in detached public-relations fashion, that all links from farm to table had to be examined to find the cause. Farm? Links?
But there was no farm - as we usually think of it - involved in this outbreak. It was a field, a leased piece of land, planted with spinach by an anonymous person doing his job for some entity in the "salad foods industry". This is an important distinction to make but it was overlooked or considered irrelevant by Dr. Gerberding.
...links from farm to table...? Yes, maybe in the absent-minded industrialized production of leafy greens and other "food products" for mass distribution, but not at the local, small, independent farm where one goes to pick-up a bunch, and half-a-gallon of raw milk. There are no "links" here in the world of real farmers and real food.
Industrialized farming necessitates the many "links" between farm and table. It is the problem which authorities attempt to resolve, ironically, with more industrialization.
In August 2007 a Salinas Valley company recalled 8,000 cartons of its fresh spinach because of a salmonella scare. A routine test during spinach processing found the salmonella. There were no reports of illness in this case.
Between 1995 and 2006, 19 E. coli outbreaks caused by contaminated salad foods were recorded by the CDC. Of these, 8 were linked to Salinas Valley. Contaminated irrrigation water has been known to be a problem in this major produce growing area.
In 2006, 74% of the fresh market spinach grown in the U.S. was from California.
The Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce's website says that it, Salinas Valley, is the center for Monterey County's $3.8 billion agriculture industry. The county is the #1 vegetable producing region in the country. ($3.8 billion!). The Chamber of Commerce site says local growers and shippers lead the industry in all phases of crop growth including seed technology, planting and irrigation, harvesting and marketing. "Agriculture is the largest driver of Monterey County's economy."
Dole is the world's largest producer and marketer of fruit and vegetables. In 2007 it claimed revenues of $6.9 billion. Over the last couple of years, Dole has been in and out of court over a movie about bananas, alleged environmental contamination in Nicaragua, and questionable lawsuits and lawyers. Dole's headquarters are in Monterey County, California.
Earthbound Farms is the "organic" brand of pre-packaged greens and vegetables sold by Natural Selections, LLC. This company was started in 1984 by a married couple from the famous farming region... Manhattan. Today they operate out of a 25,000 foot production plant in San Bautista, California. They grow their veggies in Salinas Valley half of the year and Yuma, Arizona the other half of the year. Their produce is grown by 150 farmers on 33,000 acres. Earthbound Farms is recognized as a leader in the "organic foods industry". In July 2009, to celebrate its 25th anniversary and "underscore its committment to the environment", Earthbound announced that all of its packaging would be made from 100% post-consumer recycled polyethelene terephthalate (PET).
The food industry depends heavily on plastics for packaging and transportation of their food products. The plastics industry would have us believe that their materials are efficiently recycled and reused, but plastic bottles are rarely recycled into plastic bottles. Instead, usually they're made into plastic furniture which is not recyclable.
Research by a Berkeley environmental group reveals many misconceptions about recycling of plastics. They say that most plastics are made from virgin materials (petroleum, natural gas), that manufacurers use no recycled plastic in their new packaging, and that PET, at least in bottles and jars used in soda and peanut butter, for example, leach acetaldehyde into the food material they contain.
Some food producers are using a plastic made from corn in the packaging of their fresh vegetables and greens. NatureWorks, LLC, a Cargill company, makes resins from corn and other starchy plant material that can be used to make plastics and fiber. It says that these bioplastics cost about the same as petroleum plastics and biodegrade under specific landfill conditions in 1 to 10 years. The NatureWorks website is very careful to point out that its production of bioplastics does not distinguish between GMO and non-GMO corn in its process and, therefore, should not increase the demand for GMO corn.
Right.
Packaging constitutes one-third of waste material in the U.S., including plastics made to protect food. Food packaging is fifty-six percent of the flexible packaging market. Flexible packaging is the 2nd largest packaging segment in the U.S.; it is a $26.4 billion industry. The flexible packaging industry says that flexible packaging "...adds value and marketability to food... ensures food safety and extends shelf life."
In November 2006 in the Northeast 71 people became ill after eating at a Taco Bell restaurant.
Since May 2010 Subway restaurants in Illinois have been linked to a salmonella outbreak of food-borne illness. Main suspects are lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers.
A May 2010 recall of alfalfa sprouts produced by Caldwell Fresh foods was enacted. Trader Joe's and Wal-Mart stores were sellers of these sprouts. Caldwell Fresh Foods lists its address as Maywood, California, a city in Los Angeles County. With the information available, it was not possible to locate their "family owned" farm.
Recalls of meat products occur frequently enough to be commonplace. In June 2010 in California 35,000 pounds of ground beef were recalled due to possible E. coli contamination. In the same month, ConAgra recalled its "Marie Callender" brand frozen chicken meals and Campbell Soups recalled 15,000,000 pounds of "Spaghetti-O's" with meatballs. These food contaminations occur because food processing companies are very large and their food processing has so many steps that nobody can keep track of what's going on. People still get sick from consuming this "food" in spite of the regulations, testing, and packaging which really are designed to protect the food industry.
And this "food" isn't wholesome in the first place, so it's not really food.
In an article in the November 9, 2006 New England Journal of Medicine, Dennis G. Maki, M.D., professor of medicine at University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and hospital epidemiologist at UW hospital and clinics, concerning E. coli 0157H:7, wrote:
Enormous changes in food production during the past half-century underlie the emergence of this unique bacterial enteropathogen as an agent of life-threatening foodborne disease in a developed country. During my childhood in 1950s rural Wisconsin, when I ate a hamburger at home, the ground beef had been produced locally from cuts taken from several sides of beef purchased by the neighborhood grocer from a local farmer, who probably raised no more than 25 pasture-fed cows on a 150-acre farm. If I ate a fast-food hamburger, the ground beef came from a regional packing plant, which processed cattle that had been pasture-raised on a Western ranch of several thousand acres. Today, virtually all beef consumed in North America is produced on a vast industrial scale, starting with a herd of tens of thousands of grain-fed cattle, raised in the final months before slaughter in the constrained environment of a feedlot, with the beef cuts from hundreds of cows to several thousand contributing to a single lot of more than 100,000 pounds of ground beef, shipped to many hundreds of supermarkets in multiple states. Since grain-feeding to enhance meat production — as contrasted with traditional pasturing — promotes enteric colonization by acid-resistant Shiga toxin–producing E. coli, up to 2 to 3% of domestic cattle carry E. coli O157 at the time of slaughter, which is nearly universally associated with surface contamination of the carcass. The use of ground beef produced from hundreds or even several thousand animals greatly increases the risk of contamination of the pooled meat product with Shiga toxin–producing E. coli.
Moreover, raising thousands of animals with the use of industrial farming techniques generates staggering quantities of manure potentially contaminated with Shiga toxin–producing E. coli, far more than any farm can use as fertilizer. Huge lagoons of stored liquid manure are the consequence — as are periodic spills of raw manure into nearby streams. During heavy rains, runoff contamination of fields of commercially raised vegetables and orchards, as well as of rivers, lakes, and wells, results in produce-associated or waterborne outbreaks of E. coli infection.Dr. Maki's professional and and real life observation is that
Although most reported infections with Shiga toxin–producing E. coli are linked to undercooked ground beef, nearly 25% of outbreaks stem from contamination of commercial produce that is eaten uncooked — lettuce, spinach, cabbage, sprouts, or tomatoes. Outbreaks have been traced to orchards that market unpasteurized apple cider, made from apples that have dropped from the trees and have become contaminated by E. coli O157 from manure used to fertilize the soil. Enteric colonization (and surface contamination) of domestic cattle has resulted in human disease from contaminated milk products and in outbreaks among children visiting petting zoos. Outbreaks at county fairs appear to have been caused by aerosolization of E. coli in the animal barns. Finally, since the infective dose of acid-resistant E. coli O157 (less than 100 organisms) is much lower than that of most other bacterial enteropathogens, secondary spread through fecal–oral contact further expands the number of Shiga toxin–producing E. coli cases in most outbreaks.
of the myriad community-acquired emerging infectious diseases of the past 30 years, few can more justifiably be called a "disease of progress" than enterohemorrhagic infection with Shiga toxin–producing E. coli.Dr. Maki made this point to support food irradiation which he says kills or reduces food pathogens without affecting the food. He points out that food irradiation has been approved by WHO, FDA, CDC, USDA, AMA, and so on.
Or they could make raw spinach illegal.
E. coli 0157:H7 is a strain of Escherichia coli that produces a toxin called "Shiga". It is this toxin that makes people bleed in the gastrointestinal tract. Humans are sensitive to this toxin because they have a "receptor" for it. Cows, pigs, deer, goats, and other animals have the bacteria in their GI tract but do not have the receptor for the toxin and, therefore, are not sensitive to it.
E. coli is commonly found in the lower GI tract of humans. These bacteria make vitamin K and protect the gut against infection by pathogenic bacteria. It is believed that E. coli evolved into E. coli 0157:H7-Shiga-producing with the help of a bacteriophage (or simply "phage") that injected genetic material obtained from the Shigella bacteria into the E. coli bacteria. Shigella makes a toxin that causes dysentery.
Phages are viruses that have a parasitic relationship with bacteria and have the capacity to transport DNA. They can make non-pathogenic bacteria become pathogenic, and they can kill bacteria. Biologists say that phages are the most abundant life-form on the planet. Phages have been known for a hundred years; their anti-bacterial function has been researched extensively in what formerly was called The Soviet Union. Ironically, phage research in the U.S. was side-lined after the development of antibiotics.
Recently, phage therapy is being considered as a way out of the crisis caused by pharmaceutical antibiotics' non-selective killing of bacteria. In 2006 the FDA approved the use of a phage in cheese-making to prevent Listeria contamination. A while later it was approved for use in all food, in general.
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