Spinach crisis reflects need for smaller farms
By John E. Peck
Capital Times, October 2, 2006
When Tommy Thompson gave his farewell speech as outgoing secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services under President Bush in December 2004, he shocked many by admitting he couldn't understand why terrorists had not attacked our food supply yet, since it would be so easy to do. Little did he realize that the worst threat to U.S. agriculture is homegrown.
After a decade of repeated outbreaks and warnings, vegetable growers in the Salinas Valley of California are now reaping a deadly harvest. More than 183 people nationwide have fallen victim to the deadly O157:H7 strain of E. coli bacteria, with one death confirmed in Wisconsin, and a voluntary recall of bagged spinach is now under way.
While distant D.C. officials say it is still OK to eat suspect spinach after cooking it at 160 degrees for 15 seconds, those California health experts on the ground are telling consumers to throw it all out. Recent budget and staff cuts at the federal level have left the majority of food safety inspection and enforcement in the hands of city, county and state agencies. Ironically enough, the Bush administration is now trying to railroad through Congress the National Uniformity for Food Act, which would take away this local control over food safety and labeling.
Infectious disease specialists such as Professor Lee Riley at the University of California-Berkeley are right on target when they remark that such food-borne outbreaks do not occur in Africa or Asia, since this type of disaster was basically created by corporate agribusiness practices.
Academic studies have shown time and again that livestock force-fed grain in confinement have up to 300 times more pathogenic bacteria in their system as compared to cows allowed to freely graze on grass outdoors. And one of the dirty little secrets behind California's new-found status as the No. 1 dairy state is that it is literally awash in factory farm manure, which enters as runoff into channels designed to irrigate vegetables and blows as clouds of dust onto nearby produce fields.
It was actually under President Clinton that food safety began to take a real nosedive in the United States, as genuine public oversight shifted to ineffectual feel-good self-policing programs. Demoralized federal inspectors derided the new Hazardous Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) proposal as "Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray."
Under Bush, this dangerous deregulation of our food/farm system has only accelerated. Attempts by agribusiness lobbyists and government insiders to downgrade federal organic standards to allow the application of sewage sludge were only narrowly driven back by a massive grass-roots outcry.
Unfortunately, proper manure disposal rarely occurs in large-scale livestock confinement operations. The upshot is a nightmarish landscape of leaking lagoons, tainted wells, fish kills, debilitated farm workers and poisoned food all too reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," written a century ago.
Whether it is bacteria lurking in the salad greens, genetically contaminated long-grain rice or a T-bone steak with mad cow disease, sitting down to dinner in the 21st century should not be such a gauntlet. When consumers in more than 20 states get sick from spinach grown in just one California county, it should serve as a wake-up call that we all need to reclaim and re-localize our food dollar by investing in sustainable small-scale agriculture instead.
Both the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture deserve a reminder that their public mandate is to safeguard our nation's farming system and natural heritage not to guarantee agribusiness profit.
Our entire agricultural system deserves a thorough democratic cleansing with consumer right-to-know labeling, tough antitrust action, corporate liability measures, and serious incentives for viable alternatives.
Consumers and farmers should be able to know, trust and support one another again, rather than having to dwell in fear of just what reckless free trade and filthy factory farming will bring next.
