Don’t Eat Your Spinach

Over a hundred people recently came down sick after eating bagged spinach contaminated by the rare but potentially deadly E. coli 0157 bacteria.

One person died, according to the FDA.

But insight into this sickening has been hard to come by until today, when three excellent stories were published on the subject, the first linked above from the opinion section of the NYTimes.

Nina Planck reveals that this particular brand of E. coli is typically associated with cows eating grain, producing a strain of the bacteria that can stand up to stomach acid, and thus overcome human defenses that can handle the usual strains of the omnipresent E. coli without serious difficulty.

The good news is that there is a well-known solution for E. coli 0157:

In 2003, The Journal of Dairy Science noted that up to 80 percent of dairy cattle carry O157. (Fortunately, food safety measures prevent contaminated fecal matter from getting into most of our food most of the time.) Happily, the journal also provided a remedy based on a simple experiment. When cows were switched from a grain diet to hay for only five days, O157 declined 1,000-fold.

The bad news is that the present situation is unsustainable, according to Marla Cone of the LATimes.

The bacterium that has sickened people across the nation and forced growers to destroy spinach crops is so pervasive in the Salinas Valley that virtually every waterway there violates national standards.

At Grist, Tom Philpott  picks up the story from a different angle, looking not so much at the bacterium or its source, but at our desire for convenience, and the the scale of agriculture that feeds that desire.

I can see why pre-washed salad greens have grown into a $4 billion industry since 1986, when Earthbound Farm first sorted out the technology for keeping them fresh. It’s undeniably tempting to pluck a sealed bag of uniform greens from the supermarket counter and dump it right into the salad bowl, ready for a lashing of pre-made salad dressing.

But in doing so, you’re making huge demands on the environment. Even assuming organic production, consider that California salad greens consumed on the East Coast must be trucked across the continent and kept cool at a constant 36 degrees Fahrenheit. "At least given the fuel burned to get it to my table," Michael Pollan writes in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, "there’s little reason to think my Earthbound salad mix is any more sustainable than a conventional salad."

I’m relieved to say that on this front, a neighbor got us into a CSA, so I need not fear my spinach. Or my lettuce. Or my zucchini. Or my tomatoes. Or my squash. Or my peppers. Or my beets…