Sludge Watch ==> Spinach Scare Shakes Up Almond Growers

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Sludgewatch Admin:

The story below points out that almond growers...who shake the almonds to 
the ground to harvest them, are getting nervous.  There was a big salmonella 
outbreak in raw almonds a few years back.
Yet it is quite legal and untraceable to use Class A sewage sludge on  
almond orchards.  There is no restriction or waiting period for the 
harvesting of almonds in sludged orchards.

But the Almond Growers have printed up brochures telling foreign buyers that 
sewage sludge biosolids should in no case be applied in orchards.  But what 
are the practices in California?

http://www.fishernut.com/pdf/GAPs.pdf#search=%22biosolids%20almond%20orchards%22
http://www.almondboard.com/files/PDFs/2003.10.pdf#search=%22biosolids%20almonds%20taipei%22

The salmonella outbreak  in 2003-2004 (for at least 20 peoples) was traced 
back to California almonds .  The outbreak went on for more than a year and 
18 million lbs of almonds were recalled.
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5322a8.htm

As a result, the Health Hazard Evaluation Board at the Center for Food 
Safety and Applied Nutirition, a part of the Food and Drug Administration 
(FDA), concluded that Paramount Farms raw almonds:

pose an acute, life-threatening hazard to health, particularly in children 
and elderly persons. Additionally, any products manufactured using these 
almonds, where the new product did not receive an adequate kill step to 
eliminate Salmonella from the finished product, likewise poses an acute, 
life-threatening hazard to health, particularly in children and elderly 
persons.

http://www.marlerblog.com/2006/03/articles/-legal-cases/paramount-farms-salmonella-outbreak/


When will the EPA get their head straight and ban the use of sludges on 
orchards?
........................................................................................................................


CFIA expects to have the new standards in place next year: Spinach scare 
shakes up almond growers
20.sep.06
Knight Ridder Tribune
John Holland, The Modesto Bee, Calif.


Upward of 300 billion almonds will rain to the ground in the harvest now 
under way in the Central Valley.
And if all goes according to plan, none of those nuts will make anyone sick.
The prospect of a food-safety scare always hovers over the valley's farmers 
and food processors. They see what is happening in the Salinas area, the 
source of raw spinach believed to have sickened more than 100 people with E. 
coli bacteria, killing one.
"It doesn't take much for the market to turn on you," said Doug Wells, an 
almond grower near Livingston. "In order to protect our commodity and our 
marketplace, we have to make sure we have a safe product."
The spinach business -- worth an estimated $200 million to growers in 
Monterey and San Benito counties last year -- is at a standstill now that 
health officials have urged people not to eat the greens.
The Northern San Joaquin Valley, which had an estimated $6billion in gross 
farm income last year, could take a sizable hit if just one of its major 
products were tainted.
The risks vary. Almonds, for example, are harvested by tree-shaking machines 
and sit atop the orchard soil before being swept up and trucked off. The 
growers can guard against contamination by, for example, not using raw 
manure as fertilizer. Many processors pasteurize the nuts to kill salmonella 
and other microbes.