Watch out Popeye!

FDA: Don't eat any fresh spinach
FARMERS DESTROY CROPS; E. COLI SICKENS 102 PEOPLE

By Lisa M. Krieger and John Woolfolk
Mercury News

The government on Saturday expanded its warning against eating fresh bagged spinach by also telling consumers not to eat fresh spinach or salad mixes and other products containing fresh spinach until further notice.
The warning from the federal Food and Drug Administration was prompted by a multistate outbreak of E. coli bacteria in Salinas Valley spinach that has killed one person among the 102 reported cases in 19 states.
Growers say that unless the FDA retracts its warning, their produce is worthless, so some have begun destroying their crops.
``Spinach is harvested daily -- you can't just wait a week,'' said Bob Martin of Rio Farms in King City.
``Public health is principal,'' said Bob Perkins, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, an advocacy group for local growers. ``Growers will do whatever they have to. If that means discarding spinach, that's what they'll do.''
Monterey County grows at least 60 percent of the nation's spinach, with the crop valued at $188 million in 2005. Farmers typically make two or three crop rotations during each season, so a contamination outbreak toward the end of the season could destroy one-third of the annual crop, Perkins said.
But there has been no reckoning yet of how much the bacteria outbreak will cost growers, Perkins said. ``I don't have any way to measure it,'' he said.
On Saturday, state and federal inspectors continued searching Salinas Valley fields and processing plants in a ``traceback'' investigation to identify how, and where, the deadly bacteria entered the food supply.
It is the sixth E. coli outbreak blamed on the nation's fresh produce in five years -- despite ever-tightening efforts to keep spinach and lettuce clean.
Elsewhere across the country, health officials began submitting genetic samples of the bacteria isolated from patients, so nationwide comparisons could be made. The incubation period for E. coli infection is three to nine days.
State officials said Natural Selection Foods, which markets its well-known organic Earthbound Farm brand, has been linked to the E. coli outbreak. Although the bacteria has not been isolated in products sold by the San Juan Bautista-based company, many patients reportedly ate spinach sold by the company. But investigators are looking into other producers as well.
Earthbound Farm's founders Drew and Myra Goodman did not return calls to their Carmel Valley home seeking comment.
It was still unclear Saturday whether the outbreak concerned organically or conventionally farmed spinach, said Samantha Cabaluna, spokeswoman for Natural Selection Foods. The company produces both varieties in separate sections of its San Juan Bautista processing facility. For some labels like Dole, Natural Selection produces organic and conventionally grown spinach, but for others like Trader Joe's, the company packs only its organic variety, while another producer packs the conventional kind, she said.
At Earthbound Farm's fenced compound on San Juan Highway on Saturday, security guards turned away reporters and handed them a two-page statement the company had prepared Friday evening.
Big-rigs went in and out of the compound and employees in green hard hats and heavy jackets walked about throughout the day.
``We have been working closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the California Department of Health Services (CDHS) to try to understand the scope and locate the source of any contamination,'' the company statement said. ``The health and safety of those who consume our products is our top priority today and every day.''
Ready-to-eat produce poses risks that cooked and pasteurized food does not, said attorney William Marler of Marler Clark in Seattle, who is representing 25 victims of this outbreak.
``This product has to be completely sterile to be safe,'' Marler said. ``Once bacteria is on the plant, it is nearly impossible to take off. It only takes 10 to 50 bacteria to get sick -- and 1 million of them fit on the head of a pin.''
Marler suspects that contaminated water, either from irrigation or rinsing, is the problem. ``To get this many people sick, it's got to be the water,'' he said. ``It is not just a bird flying overhead.''
It is typical for suppliers like Natural Selection Foods to grow spinach, as well as buy it from brokers, who purchase it from dozens of small growers, Marler said.
That's what makes the investigation so hard, he said.
``The longer the chain of distribution, the harder it is to pinpoint where the problem occurred,'' he said. ``We don't have bar codes on each leaf of spinach, to trace it,'' he said.
``The problem is, once it's washed and cut up and put in a bag, it is almost impossible to figure out which farm it came from,'' he said. ``That is why the FDA has been so frustrated, why the industry is so frustrated. We keep having these problems.''
Industry officials say organic and non-organic produce processors put their greens through a triple-wash process. The first step is a fresh water rinse to remove dirt; the second and third steps involve a chlorinated bath.
The vast distribution system of modern agriculture means that a single problem is quickly spread across the country, Marler said.
``Thirty years ago, if you bought contaminated lettuce or spinach, just your family would get sick. Now, it's a nationwide outbreak,'' he said.
In a Friday statement attributed to Natural Selection Foods, Chief Operating Officer Charles Sweat said ``quality and food safety have been the centerpiece of our business.''
Sweat's statement said the company's facility ``undergoes a thorough sanitation program every day.'' A quality assurance supervisor oversees every shift, monitoring chlorine levels in the water and packing plant temperatures. U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture auditors review records, observe and interview employees, and conduct pre-operation sanitation inspections in a process known in the industry as Qualified Through Verification, Sweat said. As an added safeguard, he said, products and equipment are tested for bacteria by an independent laboratory.
Organic spinach is produced without toxic chemical pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, and is not irradiated, genetically engineered or modified.
Cabaluna said there was nothing about organic produce that would make it more or less susceptible to bacterial contamination.
``We do everything the same in our processing,'' Cabaluna said.
From about Easter through Thanksgiving, all of the company's spinach is grown in nearby Salinas Valley. During the winter, it is grown in Yuma, Ariz., she said.
``We need to know where it is coming from,'' said Martin of Rio Farms in King City. His produce farm has implemented many new measures -- using ultra-clean equipment and chlorinated rinse water -- to keep ready-to-eat produce safe. But he worries that the public will lose confidence.
``It's hard to fathom how this can keep happening, when we're jumping through every hoop possible,'' he said.

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