The E. coli spinach outbreak that killed three people and sickened more than 200 seems to have left local, direct-market growers untouched, but it has raised concerns about food safety on small farms and the possibility of new regulations.
“I was guessing it was going to really hurt us,” said Pete Johnson of Pete’s Greens in Vermont. “But it was the complete opposite. People used it as a reason to not buy the California stuff. We sold double the usual amount of spinach for a couple of weeks there.”
In Wisconsin, Bill Warner of Snug Haven Farm said the news of the spinach contamination “had an effect on my heart rate” because winter spinach is a big crop for him. He was still a week away from first harvest of the crop, but customers were signing up for winter shares, and restaurants were requesting that he start delivering earlier than usual.
“My feeling is that demand is going up, though I don’t have statistics to prove it yet,” Bill said.
And in New York, Sandy Arnold said that their fall spinach crop coincidentally came to market the same week the FDA ordered all bagged spinach pulled from supermarkets.
“It hasn’t increased our sales and it hasn’t diminished our sales,” she said. “Our regular customers come to us and say ‘I’m glad I have a place to get spinach.’”
Tony Ricci, the marketing manager for Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative in Pennsylvania, (and author of the GFM column ‘Well-Seasoned” on page 13) said the spinach scare was “an interesting phenomenon from a marketing point of view.”
”We started carrying spinach the week (the problem) hit the news,” he said. “We were very nervous about sales, even though we were confident about the safety of our product, so we addressed the problem head on. I wrote a number of cover pages to our availability list explaining as succinctly as possible why the problem wasn’t spinach, but animal waste management. One of the main problems we had to deal with was how the media automatically focused on organic farming – as if only organic farmers use manure. I tried to point out not only the standards that regulate manure use in organic agriculture, but the fact that our customers could trace the source of their produce directly to the field where it was grown. To our surprise, we have had really great sales of spinach. Institutional buyers were directed not to use spinach, but most independent restaurants were confident enough to keep it on the menu. Chefs knew they could explain things to their customers, even though some might turn down spinach. Many chefs just cooked with it.”
Cooking is the only thing that kills the pathogenic E. coli 0157:H7. The bacteria die at 160°F, well below the 212°F boiling point of water at sea level. Composting often doesn’t get hot enough to kill the bacteria, though. See the news brief about compost tea on page 3.

Regulation on the way?
Everyone agrees that some government response to the spinach debacle is inevitable. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been urging voluntary measures on the fresh produce industry for more than a decade. In 1998, the FDA issued guidance to industry entitled “Guide to Minimize Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fruits and Vegetables,” also known as the Good Agricultural Practices guide. In February 2004, FDA wrote to lettuce and tomato producers urging them to take voluntary action to comply with the “guidance” from 1998. In November 2005, FDA sent a letter to California growers and shippers complaining that safety precautions were still inadequate.
In that letter, FDA said that from 1995 to 2005, there were 18 outbreaks of E. coli 0157:H7 on lettuce and one on spinach, resulting in 409 reported cases of illness and two deaths. “Although tracebacks to growers were not completed in all 19 outbreak investigations, completed traceback investigations of eight of the outbreaks associated with lettuce and spinach were traced back to Salinas, California,” FDA wrote. “In view of continuing outbreaks associated with fresh and fresh-cut lettuce and other leafy greens, particularly from California, we are issuing this second letter to reiterate our concerns and to strongly encourage firms in your industry to review their current operations in light of the agency’s guidance for minimizing microbial food safety hazards in fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as other available information regarding the reduction or elimination of pathogens on fresh produce.”
However, FDA’s encouragement was not enough to prevent this year’s massive outbreak of E. coli disease, which was first reported on August 2. By the time FDA became aware of the outbreak on September 13, most of the people who were going to get sick had already done so. At last count, 204 cases of spinach-related illness have been reported, including three deaths, 31 cases of kidney failure and more than 100 hospitalizations.
The traceback investigation has narrowed to four implicated fields on four ranches. The outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7 from cattle feces was identified on one of these four ranches, though how the bacteria got from the cattle manure to the spinach is not known. That field is currently not growing produce. Spinach from that field went into the Natural Selections Foods processing chain, where it was intermingled with greens from many other farms at the plant where it was washed and bagged. Michael Pollan, writing in The New York Times on October 15, said that the plant in question washes 26 million servings of salad every week. “In effect, we’re washing the whole nation’s salad in one big sink,” he wrote.
By mid-October, legislation had been introduced in both the U.S. Senate and House to create one big food safety agency, replacing the divided responsibilities of USDA, which oversees meat, and FDA, which oversees plant foods, though without much authority other than issuing warnings and recalls. There is talk that the produce industry is going to face regulations as stringent as the meat-processing industry, particularly for produce that is usually eaten fresh such as lettuce, tomatoes and fruits. The specter of USDA-regulated packing plants for produce has already been raised.
And the fear is that small growers will be subject to the same regulations as the industrial giants who created the problem. Like the small farmers who have to register every animal with the National Animal Identification System, created for an industrialized meat system, produce growers of every size may be forced to comply with time-consuming and technological solutions.

Back on the farm
Until the dust settles on the spinach contamination outbreak, direct market farmers may enjoy an increase in sales. But many are also thinking critically about whether local food is necessarily any safer than industrial food.
“I’ve seen a lot of pretty ramshackle washing facilities where the possibility of contamination seems pretty high,” Pete Johnson said.
Sandy Arnold said: “It makes farmers more aware that we really need to be on the up and up and be really careful about what we do.”
A great resource for growers is available from Cornell University. Called “Food Safety Begins on the Farm,” the 30-page guide explains the points in the production chain where fruits and vegetables can get contaminated, and offers suggestions for preventing contamination. It is available on the web at www. gaps.cornell.edu or in print from 607-254-5383.