E coli Food Safety Efforts Draw Environmental Backlash
The Resource Conservation District of Monterey County, California, conducted a recent survey showing that 89 percent of farmers in the Central Coast have removed vegetation around fields destroying animal habitat — a development that is linked to E. coli prevention efforts by the state’s leafy greens industry.
Some environmentalists in the area are questioning the wisdom of the practice, which could expand nationwide if federal regulators adopt provisions of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement.
Trimming natural vegetation surrounding farm fields in the Salinas Valley, aka our nation’s Salad Bowl, was encouraged after public health investigators noted that wild boars may have been responsible for spreading E. coli O157:H7 in spinach crops in 2006. The2006 baby spinach E. coli outbreak killed three people and hospitalized more than 200 others across the country.
The practice is intended to make the edges inhospitable to wildlife, but groups like the Wild Farm Alliance are concerned that the eradication is bad for the environment.
Jo Ann Baumgartner, a member of the Alliance, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel in a story today that research by scientists at UC Davis states that the surrounding grasses and wetlands have the ability to filter up to 99 percent of E. coli when it rains.
Here’s more clips from the story:
“There is science to support that these strips of vegetation prevent the movement of pathogens,” said Andrew Gordus of California Fish and Game. “If you keep filtration systems in, you help prevent those pathogens from moving downstream.”
Dale Coke, owner of Coke Farms in Watsonville, notes that it is not just E. coli that washes downstream.
“If you’ve sprayed your fields, it goes into the water system,” said Coke, who chose not to sign the leafy greens agreement and abide by its rules. “All these pesticides and fertilizers will just end up in the streams and in the oceans.”
Tags: E. coli lawyer, ecoli poisoning
