About spinach and milk

A few weeks ago, we went over some basics about what the E.coli
outbreak was about, where it came from, and why it was dangerous.
But the question remained: Were organic growing practices to blame?

Since then, spinach has gone back on the OK
list, but we've had a similar scare on green-leaf lettuce. Four
cases of botulism were linked to tainted carrot juice, sold under
both organic and conventional brands. There's also been a scare
from raw milk, but consumers have been warned for 20 years about
the dangers of unpasteurized dairy.

These issues have fueled the organic vs. conventional debate.
I've read article after article from skeptics citing studies that
use this as evidence that organic food isn't worth the money, and
may in fact be less healthy than conventional food. The basis for
this is the use of manure, rather than chemicals, as fertilizer.
The problematic strain of E.coli, E. coli O157:H7, is present in
cattle manure. Organic farmers compost cattle manure to sanitize
it before using it as manure, but there is some doubt that they do
so for long enough or under the right conditions to kill the
dangerous microbes.

A number of these detractors cite studies that I wasn't able to
find, and so can't confirm for you one way or another. For
example, I read an article that reported that both the U. S. Center
for Disease Control and its British counterpart have gathered
statistics suggesting that there is a far greater likelihood of
contracting E. coli from organic produce than conventionally
farmed. But I went all over the CDC Web site and couldn't find
anything related to that, even going back a few years.

But here are a few facts I have been able to confirm. First,
the contaminated spinach was not sold as organic. That doesn't
mean it wasn't grown organically - the producer grows under both
methods, and could have easily mixed them. But we can't
specifically blame organic farming methods

It's not yet certain exactly where the spinach-tainting
bacteria came from, but investigators have found the same strain of
the bacteria present in a cattle ranch within a mile of the spinach
fields. They still can't be sure if that was in fact the source of
the contaminant, or if it was, how it got to the spinach field, but
it "warrants further investigation." Wild pigs and other wildlife
roam the area, and plenty of potential for broken fences.

Why is this important? If the bacteria was spread through
manure tracked by wildlife, or by water contaminated by manure from
the ranch, it doesn't matter whether the spinach was being grown
organically or not. Conventionally grown spinach was equally
vulnerable.

What about the bad carrot juice? It has been traced to
Bolthouse Farms, which sells under the name of Earthbound Farms
(among others) - interestingly enough, one of the brands implicated
in the spinach scare. Food contamination in general can take place
at any point in the chain, from tainted seeds to lazy consumers who
leave their milk on the counter overnight. The latter appears to
be the culprit in the carrot juice case - the juice was not
refrigerated properly, and the botulism spores had the chance to
grow.

So the question is: who really left the juice on the counter?
Did it happen at the source? In the distribution chain? Or in the
kitchen? Regardless, Bolthouse Farms will no longer produce the
juice. Not just till it's cleared, but permanently. Hard to blame
them - it might be hard to prove just where the responsibility
lies, and in our lawsuit-happy society families might be only to
willing to assign blame

I researched this looking for evidence that organic produce was
either more or less prone to bacterial contamination. One of the
most commonly quoted studies on both sides of the argument was from
the University of Minnesota, conducted in 2004. Their research into
various organic crops found that the organic products had almost no
pathenogenic bacteria but was more subject to fecal contamination
(which is where E.coli comes from) than conventionally grown
produce.

At the same time, though, produce from a certified organic farm
had far less contamination (4.3% of samples) than produce from a
farm that was "semiorganic," or not certified, but claiming that
they followed organic growing practices (11.4% of samples).
Researches found E.coli in just 1.6% of samples from conventionally
grown produce. (You can read a summary of the report here.)

The study's conclusion was that there was no significant
difference in contamination levels among the three farming types,
until you took the type of crop into account: they found E.coli on
fully one-third of leafy greens grown on semiorganic farms. At the
same time, though, the organic-doubters quote the same statistics
as evidence that organic methods are indeed more dangerous. We see
what we want to see, don't we?

So back to our question. Is organic food inherently more
risky? The study above concludes that for certified organic farms,
the difference in contamination levels was insignificant. But,
strictly speaking, it is higher.

Does this mean you should avoid the organic stuff? Probably
not; according to the Center for Disease Control, you're more
likely to contract E.coli from undercooking your own hamburger than
from bad vegetables. But you may want to consider taking a closer
look at where your food comes from. The spinach in question all
came from a few farms in California. Buying bagged spinach from
one of those farms would have been a bad idea. But if you live in
Maine, buying fresh spinach from the local farmer's market would
have been fine.

In this case, produce from the Salinas Valley has been
implicated in bacterial outbreaks nine times in the last decade.
With the severity of this case, there is some speculation that
Natural Selection Foods may not survive. Regardless, there will be
significant investigation into farming practices in the area.