Tainted Spinach Traced to California (Organic Food Grower--Earthbound Farm)

AP ^ | 9/16/2006 | Andrew Bridges

[Aussiebabe]

Tainted spinach traced to California By ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 43 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A California natural foods company was linked Friday to a nationwide E. coli outbreak that has killed one person and sickened nearly 100 others. Supermarkets across the country pulled spinach from shelves, and consumers tossed out the leafy green.

Food and Drug Administration officials said that they had received reports of illness in 19 states. Twenty-nine people have been hospitalized, 14 of them with kidney failure.

The outbreak was traced to Natural Selection Foods, a holding company based in San Juan Bautista, Calif., known for Earthbound Farm and other brands. The company has voluntarily recalled products containing spinach.

FDA officials stressed that the bacteria had not been isolated in products sold by Natural Selection Foods but that the link was established by patient accounts of what they had eaten before becoming ill.

An investigation was continuing.

"It is possible that the recall and the information will extend beyond Natural Selection Foods and involve other brands and other companies, at other dates," said Dr. David Acheson, the chief medical officer with the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Natural Selection Foods LLC said in a statement that it was cooperating with federal and state health officials to identify the source of the contamination and had stopped shipping all fresh spinach products. They are sold under many brand names, including Earthbound Farm, Dole, Green Harvest, Natural Selection Foods, Rave Spinach, Ready Pac and Trader Joe's.

State health officials received the first reports of illness on Aug. 25, and the FDA was informed on Wednesday, Acheson said.

The FDA warned people nationwide not to eat the spinach. Washing won't get rid of the tenacious bug, though thorough cooking can kill it.

"We're waiting for the all-clear. In the meantime, Popeye the Sailor Man and this family will not be eating bagged spinach," said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University. The Tennessee university's medical center was treating a 17-year-old Kentucky girl for E. coli infection. That case originally was listed as being from Tennessee, but federal health officials changed it to Kentucky.

Each year, consumers buy hundreds of millions of pounds of bagged spinach — triple-washed and packaged in cellophane bags and clamshell boxes.

"We are very, very upset about this," Natural Selection Foods spokeswoman Samantha Cabaluna said Friday night. "What we do is produce food that we want to be healthy and safe for consumers, so this is a tragedy for us."

The company said consumers could call 800-690-3200 for a refund or replacement coupons for tossed-out spinach products.

Wisconsin accounted for 29 illnesses, about one-third of the cases, including the lone death. The victim's son identified her Friday night as Marion Graff, 77, of Manitowoc, who died of kidney failure on Sept. 7.

Other states reporting cases were: California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We are telling everyone to get rid of fresh bagged spinach right now. Don't assume anything is over," Gov. Jim Doyle said.

FDA officials said they issued the nationwide consumer alert without waiting to identify the source of the tainted spinach.

"Early is good," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, adding that the alert may have prevented hundreds more cases.

An industry spokeswoman said public health concerns justified the blanket warning: "It needed to happen this way," said Kathy Means, a spokeswoman for the Produce Marketing Association. "Public health has to trump economics at this time."

More than half the nation's 500 million-pound spinach crop is grown in California's Monterey County, according to the Agriculture Department.

"We're trying to get to the bottom of this and figure out what happened. Everybody is terribly concerned," said Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Even before the latest outbreak, a joint state and federal effort has been under way in the California county to find and eliminate any possible sources of E. coli contamination.

"We need to strive to do even better so even one life is not lost," said Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, FDA's acting commissioner.

The FDA's top food expert stressed the importance of stopping the bacterium at its source, since rinsing spinach won't eliminate the risk. "If you wash it, it is not going to get rid of it," said Robert Brackett, director of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Nutrition.

E. coli lives in the intestines of cattle and other animals and typically is spread through contamination by fecal material. Brackett said the use of manure as a fertilizer for produce typically consumed raw, such as spinach, is not in keeping with good agricultural practices. "It is something we don't want to see," he told a food policy conference.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Safeway Inc., SuperValu Inc. and other major grocery chains stopped selling spinach, removing it from shelves and salad bars.

"We pulled everything that we have spinach in," said Dan Brettelle, manager of a Piggly Wiggly store in Columbia, S.C.

Consumer activist Barb Kowalcyk said fixing the nation's "fractured network" of food safety agencies could save lives. In 2001, her 2-year-old son, Kevin, died of E. coli, possibly after eating tainted ground beef.

"How can we improve communication between agencies? That needs to happen," the Loveland, Ohio, resident said.

Not all strains of E. coli cause illness: E. coli O157:H7, the strain involved in the current outbreak, was first recognized as a cause of illness in 1982. That strain causes an estimated 73,000 cases of infection, including 61 deaths, each year in the United States, according to the CDC.

When ingested, the bug can cause diarrhea, often with bloody stools. Most healthy adults can recover completely within a week, although some people — including the very young and old — can develop a form of kidney failure that often leads to death.

Sources of the bacterium include uncooked produce, raw milk, unpasteurized juice, contaminated water and meat, especially undercooked or raw hamburger.

[ASOC]

May I suggest you take a trip to the ROK? You might be amazed at is used as fertilizer.

I was there a long time ago, but I doubt a whole lot has changed in the rural areas.

[A knight without armor]

I don't grow food plants and looks like that is a good thing. I must say I HAD NO IDEA fresh manure is dangerous. I always thought it was very desirable to put manure on plants and if anything the fresher the better. I really learned something new with this discussion. I suppose farmers have to take serious measures to keep animals out of the garden for reasons other than eating and stomping on the vegetables. It can be very serious if they should defecate in there.

[tiki]

The same people who started "organic" gave us extreme environmentalism(ie. regulation) "free sex" "politacal correctness" and on and on. Why would I trust them on this.

I lived through the hippie generation, and stood back in revulsion. My husband's sister and her family lived out the whole life. Preached it to me until I wanted to puke. In their extreme vegetarian days their daughter suffered from malnutrition and had a very hard time, but hey, they were doing the right thing. They have spent a fortune at the health food store buying limp veggies and organically grown crap. The husband couldn't lift a 25 lb bag of cat food (which would have been better for them than the diet they held to). The wife and the oldest daughter are obese because they eat too many grain and bread products and not enough nutritionally dense MEAT and they don't have the energy to exersize.

[Parmy]

As a packer of organic and conventional apricots, peaches and nectarines I can assure you that 'organic' doesn't mean better. It is just that some people have been 'brainwashed' into believeing that 'organic' is better.

Growers go to the extra trouble of growing 'organic' because of the potential monetary rewards. Once again, the fruit isn't more nutritious or better for you. In fact, it is generally picked greener than the conventionally grown fruit so it doesn't have as much sugar brix and doesn't taste as sweet.

As far as growing practices are concerned, in Washington state the grower is highly restricted on the types of materials that can be applied to his 'organic' fields. He has a three year wait before his crop can be classified as 'organic'. Prior to becoming 'organic' it is labeled 'transitional'. Finally, some of the sprays labeled for 'organic' us are more toxic than those labeled for conventional crops. Also, only composted manure can be used on 'organic' fields.

[muawiyah]

At last a "bu||$h|+" free America.

[TaxRelief]

There is a great book, out of print, that is my homesteading guide: "Back to Basics" by Readers Digest.

[TaxRelief]

Many of the physical ills of society today are derived from liberal-generated fecal matter: AIDS from the "sexual revolution", E. coli from the "organic produce" movement, bird flu from unsanitary conditions in communist China, and Salmonella from land use restrictions that increase chicken density on chicken farms.

:-)

[KarinG1]

Well, they certainly seem to have done something wrong.

[omega4179]

The lefties have an affinity for junk science that validates their viewpoints and their general misery. In the 70s they gave us DDT,Comets, Swine Flu and the coming ice age.
Now its the 2000s they want to ban nicotene, nitrites, diazinon(and other useful things) they have the meteor strikes, Bird flu and the global "warming"

[tiki]

LOL, I've never understood their distaste for cigarettes since most of them still smoke weed!

[TennesseeGirl]

Somebody help me out here. It is my understanding that Natural Selection Foods is the DISTRIBUTOR, not the grower, correct? So...where did the spinach originate? Where was it grown?

[mewzilla]

...the use of untreated cow manure in the industry is good source of E. coli which can cause this type of problem.

What about people manure? Workers defecating in the fields? Or is the outbreak too big for that to be a consideration?

[cyborg]

Natural Selections is a distributor and Earthbound Farms is just one of the many subsets of spinaches they distribute. I always wash my vegetables, even the ones that come out of my own garden. I do not use any pesticides whatsoever and for someone who has eaten organic, I've never gotten sick. I HAVE gotten sick from a restaurant that used conventional produce that still had DIRT on the lettuce that was served to me.

[cyborg]

I do not eat meat at all and am quite healthy. I am also not a hippie but a practicing Roman Catholic and very conservative. I eat organically grown crap from my own backyard. Mmaybe you just need to get know some different people who know what they're doing. Sheesh.

[cyborg]

http://www.nsfoods.com/

[Aussiebabe]

You got that right! LOL

[tiki]

Good for you.

[Fiddlstix]

Other states reporting cases were: California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Well, us Texans ain't got nuthin' to worry about then. We gets our spinach from Crystal City, Texas.

Snip:
.......Thanks to ample underground water and its sandy soil, Crystal City produces 80 percent or more of the nation's spinach crop.

And
The Home of Popeye.

Click The Pic For The Rest of the Story

Snip:
........ When the newspaper put out a special historical edition in 1934, it featured a cartoon drawn exclusively for the Advocate. In it, Popeye said, "Please assept me hearties bes' wishes an' felicitations on account of yer paper's 88th Anniversity....Victoria [TX] is me ol' home town on account of tha's where I got born'd at."

So there it is, in black-and-white: Popeye, the Sailor Man is a native Texan. Now pass the spinach.

J

[1rudeboy]

Thanks to all our "world trade" crap. I try very hard to buy American in the grocery store. Admittedly it is getting harder and harder to do.

You must have quite the Mason Jar operation.

[twntaipan]

Mankind stopped crapping in the fields a long time ago.

Not in many parts of China!