Sludge Watch ==> Dead from Spinach - The Great Pig Hunt - What is Going on Here?

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Lets see ... what can be blamed for the E. coli deaths that won't make us 
change factory farming practices and won't make us stop irrigating spinach 
with sewage effluent that comes out of the pipe untested....?

Oh yeah... pigs.

........................................................................................


The Great Pig Hunt
The latest E. coli outbreak raises questions about conditions on industrial 
cattle farms

~ By ALLISON MILIONIS ~




California spinach farmers took it on the chin last month following the news 
that their leafy green crops were contaminated with a deadly strain of E. 
coli bacteria, the 0157: H7. In just a few weeks, over 200 E. coli-related 
illnesses and three deaths were reported nationwide and all of the people 
who succumbed to the virulent pathogen had eaten bagged spinach prior to 
becoming ill.
Immediately, health officials descended on California’s central valley – the 
spinach capital of the U.S. – in search of the source, while Natural 
Selection Foods LLC of San Juan Batista, which packs greens for a host of 
labels including Trader Joe’s and Dole, issued a nationwide recall of all 
its bagged spinach and salad with spinach in the blend. On September 29, the 
U.S Food and Drug Administration announced that they had traced the outbreak 
to spinach packaged by Natural Selection Foods but were no farther along in 
determining how the E. coli found its way into the bags.

As details of the investigation trickled out, the question quickly changed 
from “how could this have happened?” to “why doesn’t it happen all the 
time?” Central Valley fields, it turns out, are at fairly high risk of 
infection. Surrounded by livestock farms (where E. coli thrives) and 
reservoirs that catch agricultural runoff, leafy crops are susceptible to 
contamination from irrigation water laden with all kinds of heavy metals and 
toxic chemicals as well as pathogenic microorganisms – E. coli being the 
most dangerous.

And that’s just in the field. Between the time spinach is harvested to the 
moment it’s sealed in an airtight bag, unwashed hands and unsanitary 
machinery provide many opportunities for rogue E. coli bacteria to spread to 
spinach leaves.

On October 12, nearly two weeks after announcing the vegetable source of the 
E. coli outbreak, the FDA and the State of California released some results 
of their intensive field investigation, implicating cow feces from a ranch 
located within a mile of the spinach field. (The name of the ranch has been 
withheld.) According to their findings, samples of the feces tested positive 
based on matching genetic fingerprints for the same strain of E. coli in the 
outbreak. Cattle are one of E. coli’s favorite hosts, as the bacteria 
thrives not only in the animals’ intestines, but also on udders and any 
equipment that comes into contact with raw milk.

But cattle aren’t the only common hosts; wildlife can carry it too. And, 
what they don’t carry internally, they can track on their feet, as was 
allegedly the case with the beast finally implicated in this spinach 
mystery: a feral pig, or wild boar. Days after announcing that the pathogen 
was found at a neighboring cattle ranch, news agencies were reporting that a 
feral pig killed on the ranch tested positive for E. coli. As of yet, no 
statement has been released from a government agency confirming this, and 
it’s not clear who shot the pig. However, the San Jose Mercury ? News 
printed a story quoting Kevin Reilly, deputy director of the state 
Department of Health Services, saying that pigs are “one clear vehicle” that 
could explain how the E. coli spread from cattle on the ranch to the spinach 
field.

The finding conveniently moved suspicion from the state’s cattle stock – 
which clearly do carry the E. coli strain – and onto a wild pig, which 
doesn’t cast doubt on the state’s meat supply. Or, at least, not as much. 
California’s wild pigs are descendants of both feral and domestic European 
stock, can weigh up to 1,000 pounds, and will eat just about anything. The 
animals have long roamed the forests and fields of the Central Valley.

“It’s hard to piece together what is going on here,” says Edward Atwell, 
professor of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis. Atwell specializes in 
waterborne infections and diseases and is the co-principal investigator on a 
four-year study of E. coli funded with a research grant from the USDA. 
Before the end of 2006, a team of scientists will begin collecting thousands 
of samples of domestic animal and wildlife droppings, water, soil, and 
greens from the farms in the Central Valley.

“Is this strain increasingly more prevalent? It’s hard to prove,” says 
Atwell. “It could be that we hear more about it because we’re washing 
[greens] together in large vats, where it can spread. Another thought is 
that we’re just eating more fresh leafy greens than ever before.

“We’ll be looking at the wildlife, livestock, and water that passes through 
the fields,” he says. “Some principles of how pathogens move are universal. 
But the information [in the study] will be specific to California.”

After collecting two years of data, scientists will be able to name all E. 
coli carriers, assess the climate, landscape and irrigation methods, then 
determine whether contaminated greens are associated with certain farming 
practices or environmental factors.

“We can’t speculate,” says Robert Mandrell, another co-principal 
investigator in the study and a research leader with the USDA’s Agricultural 
Research Service Produce Safety and Microbiology Research Unit. “Everyone 
will come to this with data. We can’t over-interpret, but there are 
disseminating factors that may be amplifying [the spread of E. coli].” 
Mandrell lists factors such as higher climate temperatures, the prevalence 
of decaying plant material, and the processing methods.

But environmental, health, and animal advocates have been predicting an 
ecological meltdown in the Central Valley for years. The culprits, they 
argue, are the industrialized agricultural facilities, often referred to as 
factory farms. Critics have long called on the government to enforce higher 
standards of care and environmental responsibility on these huge operations 
to ameliorate their dense populations of animals. But such calls often clash 
with agribusiness corporations carrying serious political cachet.

In a 1998 study, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that 
California’s Central Valley had an acute water quality problem as a result 
of these unsustainable farms, and recommended that the state “[hold] 
corporations that own livestock animals responsible for paying the cost of 
waste disposal and cleanup.”

The Central Valley is the number-one milk producing region in the nation. 
But its 900,000 dairy cows produce outrageous amounts of manure that get 
into groundwater, rivers, agriculture reservoirs, irrigation pipes, and 
drinking water. Water managers in the Chino area blame that region’s dairy 
farms for widely-

reported contamination there – and the subsequent migration of its dairy 
operations to other parts of the valley.

In response to the recent E. coli outbreak, the NRDC issued a statement 
claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wasn’t doing enough 
to protect our food and water supplies from large factory farms. “We have 
the technology to significantly reduce the bacteria, viruses, and parasites 
in factory farm animal waste,” stated Melanie Shephardson, an NRDC attorney. 
“We shouldn’t have to worry about eating contaminated vegetables or drinking 
water.”

Mike McConnell, Executive Director and Founder of Husbandry Institute, a 
nonprofit organization in the Bay Area that promotes sustainable and ethical 
animal farming, believes that factory farms are threatening our health and 
quality of life. “I believe these massive outbreaks are the result of scale 
in the production and processing of vegetables and meat,” he says.

Responding to questions about the outbreak, Matt Bryne, executive 
vice-president of the California Cattlemen’s Association, says, “We’re as 
interested as anyone in this issue and seeing it resolved.”

It will be four years before scientists have hard data on the Central Valley 
E. coli crisis. Within that time, health officials will be cracking down on 
farmers, workers, and processors, sending out more letters and establishing 
more guidelines. Consumers will be reminded of the health threat of eating 
raw vegetables. And cattle ranches? They’ll be more tightly regulated for 
environmental pollution – when pigs fly.

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=4593&IssueNum=179