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The Vegetable-Industrial Complex By MICHAEL POLLAN

PORKER

Well-known member
Posted: Wed Oct 25, 2006 9:14 pm Post subject: California urged to monitor farms for food safety

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California urged to monitor farms for food safety
25.oct.06
Center for Science in the Public Interest
WASHINGTON—The state of California should move quickly to adopt regulations governing the production of fruit and vegetables in California since no federal agency has yet adopted standards, according to the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). In a legal petition filed with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and California Department of Health Services Director Sandra Shewry, CSPI food safety director Caroline Smith DeWaal said that mandatory regulations governing manure, water and sanitation on farms could help reduce the number of produce-borne food outbreaks, such as the recent outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 traced to California-farmed spinach.
“California should implement standards to protect its consumers and its produce industry, instead of waiting for Congress or one of the federal agencies with food safety responsibilities to step in,” DeWaal said. “This is clearly a case where prompt action at the state level could prevent future outbreaks.”
CSPI urged the officials to adopt measures similar to the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) standards that meat and poultry producers are required to comply with nationwide. HACCP systems coupled with test and hold programs for ground beef have proven effective in reducing the number of E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks linked to beef. Meanwhile, outbreaks linked to fresh produce have increased in recent years, according to CSPI. In addition to the recent spinach outbreak, tomatoes, lettuces, melons, sprouts, carrot juice and other foods contaminated with E. coli, Salmonella or other pathogens have caused outbreaks. Those pathogens are usually—though not always—linked back to animal agriculture, which CSPI says warrants a particular regulatory focus on manure and water.
The same strain of E. coli that sickened 200 and killed at least three in the recent spinach outbreak has been matched with that of cattle manure found near one of the spinach fields at issue. CSPI says that the use of raw manure as fertilizer should be prohibited during the growing season, and that composting practices should be monitored to ensure pathogens are destroyed. Water used for irrigation must be tested and found suitable and only drinkable water should be used in produce processing facilities, according to the group.
CSPI’s petition also urges better hygiene and sanitation on farms, and for improved package markings that can be used to track back produce to the farm of origin.
“We are reaching a tipping point, where consumers may not trust voluntary industry programs and instead may choose to stop eating foods that are both convenient and vital to good health. I don’t think Salinas County growers can afford to be the cause of another large outbreak,” DeWaal said. “California often takes the lead in health and food safety issues when the federal government is slow to act. The state should exercise its leadership in this instance by giving our food supply a safe start on its farms.”
The petition CSPI filed with the state of California is available at http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/ca_produce_petition.pdf.
In other action, last week CSPI wrote to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt to request that the department do a fair and accurate reporting of the deaths and illnesses linked to the recent spinach outbreak. Specifically, CSPI asked that Leavitt declare June Edith Dunning, an elderly Maryland woman who died September 13 from complications due to E. coli 0157:H7, as the fourth fatal victim of the spinach outbreak that affected consumers in 26 states and further, that Leavitt personally assess the methods being used by CDC to distinguish “official” cases from “suspect” cases and give a full accounting of the public health impact of this outbreak.
The letter to Leavitt is available at http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/leavitt_letter.pdf.
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
The imposition of HACCP was one of the tools used to eliminate the small/medium packers...cost of upgrading plants to comply...daily cost of one inspector spread over tens or hundreds of head vs. thousands of head.

Why does this matter?

When producers lose the ability to sell directly to the consumer, they lose the ability to effect the market...and control of their own destiny!

But if industrial farming gave us this bug, it is industrial eating that has spread it far and wide. We don’t yet know exactly what happened in the case of the spinach washed and packed by Natural Selection Foods, whether it was contaminated in the field or in the processing plant or if perhaps the sealed bags made a trivial contamination worse. But we do know that a great deal of spinach from a great many fields gets mixed together in the water at that plant, giving microbes from a single field an opportunity to contaminate a vast amount of food. 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.

It’s conceivable the same problem could occur in your own kitchen sink or on a single farm. Food poisoning has always been with us, but not until we started processing all our food in such a small number of “kitchens” did the potential for nationwide outbreaks exist.

Surely this points to one of the great advantages of a decentralized food system: when things go wrong, as they sooner or later will, fewer people are affected and, just as important, the problem can be more easily traced to its source and contained. A long and complicated food chain, in which food from all over the countryside is gathered together in one place to be processed and then distributed all over the country to be eaten, can be impressively efficient, but by its very nature it is a food chain devilishly hard to follow and to fix.

Centralized processing is affecting the trust consumers have for OUR PRODUCT...we should all be concerned!
 

mrj

Well-known member
RobertMac said:
The imposition of HACCP was one of the tools used to eliminate the small/medium packers...cost of upgrading plants to comply...daily cost of one inspector spread over tens or hundreds of head vs. thousands of head.

Why does this matter?

When producers lose the ability to sell directly to the consumer, they lose the ability to effect the market...and control of their own destiny!

But if industrial farming gave us this bug, it is industrial eating that has spread it far and wide. We don’t yet know exactly what happened in the case of the spinach washed and packed by Natural Selection Foods, whether it was contaminated in the field or in the processing plant or if perhaps the sealed bags made a trivial contamination worse. But we do know that a great deal of spinach from a great many fields gets mixed together in the water at that plant, giving microbes from a single field an opportunity to contaminate a vast amount of food. 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.

It’s conceivable the same problem could occur in your own kitchen sink or on a single farm. Food poisoning has always been with us, but not until we started processing all our food in such a small number of “kitchens” did the potential for nationwide outbreaks exist.

Surely this points to one of the great advantages of a decentralized food system: when things go wrong, as they sooner or later will, fewer people are affected and, just as important, the problem can be more easily traced to its source and contained. A long and complicated food chain, in which food from all over the countryside is gathered together in one place to be processed and then distributed all over the country to be eaten, can be impressively efficient, but by its very nature it is a food chain devilishly hard to follow and to fix.

Centralized processing is affecting the trust consumers have for OUR PRODUCT...we should all be concerned!


RobertMac, who do you think was working for, and who was working against implementation of HACCP.......and why?

Do you want to return to the old days of a "look, see, and smell" system to replace the science based testing and packer and worker awareness of critical points in the system where incidences of food borne pathogens might become a problem getting better inspections? Our local locker plants didn't have to make a lot of changes, and they simply raised their prices to cover what they did change. SD inspections must meet or exceed the requirements for federal inspections and have an inspector present while processing animals, even in small, local plants.

Producers in SD can sell directly to consumers. Is it against the law in your state?

MRJ
 

Econ101

Well-known member
MRJ, meat inspectors have no authority to really do anything. We are already at the point where packers are doing what they think they can get away with and have lots of ways of hiding mistakes instead of taking responsibilty. You are in a dreamworld if you don't see that.
 

Jason

Well-known member
So who is responsible for e-coli recalls if meat inspectors have no power to do anything?

Packers just reall meat voluntarilly?
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Jason, out of country tuition is just too hard to come up with for a fella like you who can barely fix their roof or drive into town.
 

RobertMac

Well-known member
Jason said:
So who is responsible for e-coli recalls if meat inspectors have no power to do anything?

Packers

Packers just reall meat voluntarilly?

Yes

And on top of that, USDA will not reveal where the meat was shipped!!
 
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