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The Price of Convenience

An e coli outbreak last year traced to contaminated, bagged spinach left several dead, hundreds sickened and countless consumers nervous about eating what should have been a nutritious and healthy product.

Why did this happen? And what can consumers do to protect themselves?

The problem starts in the fields where spinach is grown. Food safety experts say there are numerous opportunities for contamination – from feral pigs that wander into fields where spinach is growing to fecal-polluted irrigation sources used during the heat of the summer growing season. Once they adhere to the leaves, bacteria are easily trapped in folds and crevices and can be difficult to scrub off during processing.

It takes only a few cells to cause illness. Because the leaves from thousands of plants and numerous farms are mixed together during processing, as little as one contaminated plant from a single farm can lead to a widespread outbreak. When the bagged leaves are trucked across the country, additional opportunities for bacteria to grow emerge, if refrigerated trucks should break down or drivers turn off generators to save fuel, for example.

Unlike meat, spinach is often eaten raw, so there may be no opportunities to kill the bacteria once the product reaches your kitchen. And contamination may not be easily visible. Though food safety experts have now declared spinach grown on American farms safe to eat, many are hesitant to restore trust. So what to do?

Eating food grown close to home reduces opportunities for contamination. Buying fresh (not bagged) spinach from local farms doesn’t guarantee its safety, but it means the leaves weren’t mixed with those from numerous farms or trucked for hours or days in conditions that might allow bacteria to grow. Thoroughly scrubbing the leaves, especially in the folds and crevices, is also another good preventive measure consumers can take.

For more information about this issue, click here.

To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org