Sludge Watch ==> Safety Advocates, growers debate produce rules

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:
This is a story you might want to read in the link version...since there are 
helpful graphs, charts, substories, and a little video.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-09-24-produce-rules_x.htm
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Safety advocates, growers debate produce rules
9/24/2006

 By Vern Fisher, Monterey County Herald via AP

Stephen Pedersen of High Organic Farm in Watsonville, Calif., looks over his 
crop of organic spinach. California farmers facing national scrutiny after 
an E. coli outbreak caused by tainted spinach are grappling with how to 
increase food safety in the face of hard-to-control risks like water quality 
and animal contact.


By John Ritter, USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO - As illnesses mount from tainted California spinach, so do 
calls for a crackdown on a loosely regulated, mostly self-policed produce 
industry that has avoided mandatory controls.
Consumer advocates and lawmakers urge tougher rules for fields and 
processing plants, while investigators chase the source of an elusive E. 
coli bacteria strain that has sickened 173 people and killed a Wisconsin 
woman.
Growers and packers in the $1.7-billion-a-year spinach and lettuce market 
say they can solve a problem that since 1995 has led to 20 known E. coli 
outbreaks in the USA. Nine were traced to California's Salinas Valley, the 
nation's biggest producer of leafy greens.
Last week, industry leaders prepared to take a new package of voluntary 
guidelines to Washington. Critics say it's time to hold fresh produce - 
loose or bagged - to tough standards like those in the meat industry, which 
suffered through and solved its own rash of E. coli outbreaks in the early 
1990s.
"Nobody's really checking, nobody's really auditing or monitoring that in 
fact they're using their guidelines," says Caroline Smith DeWaal, food 
safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an 
advocacy group in Washington. "So we urge that the guidelines be made 
mandatory."
The produce industry will "take whatever steps necessary to ensure food 
safety," says Tim Chelling, a spokesman for Western Growers, which 
represents 3,000 farmers and shippers in California and Arizona. Mandatory 
controls "would not be our preference."
Such rules aren't justified when the source of E. coli in leafy greens 
remains a mystery, the industry argues: Why make growers and packers follow 
procedures that haven't been shown to prevent contamination?
In none of the 20 outbreaks did investigators isolate a cause, according to 
the federal Food and Drug Administration. The growers and packers say they 
follow common sense "best practices" such as sanitary harvesting, good 
worker hygiene and rigorous water-quality control in irrigation and 
processing.
More regulations could sidetrack efforts to learn why lettuce and spinach 
are susceptible to E. coli, Chelling says. "We're not doing any kind of 
knee-jerk reaction to any proposals at this point."
FDA actions
The FDA, in a stern letter last November, rejected that rationale: "Claims 
that 'we cannot take action until we know the cause' are unacceptable," the 
letter said.
"We want the industry to do things better," says Jerry Gillespie, director 
of the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at the University of 
California-Davis. "But when it comes time to tell them what 'better' is, 
it's very difficult, because we're not quite sure what they're doing wrong."
The FDA's November letter wasn't its first warning. In 1998, the agency 
issued "guidelines" to the growers and shippers. In February 2004, it 
"encouraged" the industry to review its practices. Eight months later, the 
FDA released a "produce safety action plan" to fight food-borne illnesses. 
In November 2005, the FDA expressed "serious concern" and "strongly 
encouraged" companies to again review operations. That prompted California 
regulators to send their own "strongly urge" letter.
In August, just before the current outbreak, by far the worst to hit the 
leafy-green market, the FDA announced a "lettuce safety initiative" - then 
added spinach as E. coli cases rose this month. Most spinach is sold 
prepackaged.
"FDA is really coming in after the fact," DeWaal says. "They're very much 
like a fire department rushing in to put out a fire. We think they should do 
much more to prevent these outbreaks."
When E. coli was plaguing meat products - ground beef is still the leading 
source of E. coli infections - the meatpacking industry undertook a 
"farm-to-table" review of operations and a lot of "trial and error" 
research, Gillespie says.
With two key changes - washing cows before slaughter to remove pathogens and 
rigorous sanitation in hide removal - E. coli "substantially subsided," he 
says.
Leafy greens present a different challenge. "This is a delicate product. To 
be attractive and palatable to consumers, you can't just high-power wash 
it," he says.
No smoking guns have been found as in meat processing. E. coli in lettuce 
and spinach has been traced to fields - investigators narrowed the search 
last week to nine farms in the Salinas Valley, producer of more than half 
the nation's fresh spinach. The FDA cautions that the trace-back may end 
there.
Investigators focus on the usual suspects: water supplies, irrigation, leaky 
septic tanks, manure composting, worker sanitation and inadequately 
chlorinated water used to rid spinach of bacteria.
In the water
The regional water board has found high concentrations of the virulent E. 
coli strain in local streams and rivers, presumably from manure-tainted 
runoff.
Farms growing dinner-table crops don't irrigate from rivers, but a flooded 
river can spread contaminated water over fields. Inspectors don't check to 
see whether fields are dry after floods or packers' chlorinated washes are 
OK. They depend on companies to follow industry guidelines. "FDA almost 
never visits farms unless there's an outbreak," DeWaal says.
State inspectors last visited facilities of Natural Selection Foods, one of 
the companies that has recalled tainted spinach, six months ago and found no 
violations, says Kevin Reilly, a deputy director in the state health 
services department.
Until last month, only one of the 20 E. coli outbreaks linked to leafy 
greens had involved spinach. In October 2003, 16 people in a San Mateo 
retirement home got sick, and two died. State investigators traced the 
spinach to five fields but found no "likely source."
Mandatory rules will "level the playing field, so clean operators aren't 
penalized for having a safer product," says Martin Cole, director of the 
National Center for Food Safety and Technology at Michigan State University.
The Economic Research Service estimates food-borne illnesses cost the U.S. 
economy $7 billion a year. Friday, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., renewed his 
call for a single food-safety agency to replace a "mismatched, piecemeal 
approach" that "could spell disaster."
Twelve federal agencies have roles in food safety.
Among the 173 people stricken by the current E. coli outbreak, 27 developed 
kidney failure.
"I've talked to families with kids who are probably going to have 
neurological damage besides kidney problems, maybe have to have a 
transplant," says Seattle lawyer Drew Falkenstein, who represents some of 
them. "Huge stuff. It's going to cost a lot of money and be devastating over 
their lifetimes."