The recent outbreak of E. coli in spinach from California exposed a weakness in the nation’s food chain: A system that quickly delivers meat, fruits and vegetables to consumers just as easily can spread potentially deadly bacteria.
Like most food, spinach travels from the field to a central facility where it mixes with spinach from other fields. If any is tainted, the threat to people is amplified as leaves are washed, dried, bagged and shipped throughout the country.
Within days of the first reported E. coli-related case Aug. 30, illness from the tainted California spinach had spread to ACtwo dozen states. Nearly 200 people were sickened–one-third of them in the first 72 hours. Two elderly women and a 2-year-old boy died.
“If something went wrong on any one of those fields … one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel,” said Dr. Robert Tauxe, chief of food-borne diseases at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Sunday, green leaf lettuce from the same growing area, California’s Salinas Valley, was recalled after possible E. coli contamination of irrigation water was discovered. The Food and Drug Administration does not have inspection or safety programs for produce like the Agriculture Department has for meat and poultry.
Today, illnesses from E. coli are down 29 percent from when the government tracking system began a decade ago.
“It took a few years, but I think we have a really good handle on how to control this organism,” said Randy Huffman, vice president of science for the American Meat Institute, an industry group.
