Leafy Green Sewage
"Farmers and food safety officials still have much to figure out about the recent spate of E. coli infections linked to raw spinach. . . this epidemic, which has infected more than 100 people and resulted in at least one death, probably has little do with the folks who grow and package your greens. . . [T]he villain in this outbreak, E. coli O157:H7, is far scarier [than more common strains], at least for humans. Your stomach juices are not strong enough to kill this acid-loving bacterium, which is why it’s more likely than other members of the E. coli family to produce abdominal cramps, diarrhea, fever and, in rare cases, fatal kidney failure. Where does this particularly virulent strain come from? . . . O157 thrives in a new — that is, recent in the history of animal diets — biological niche: the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms. It’s the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms. . . [In an experiment,] when cows were switched from a grain diet to hay for only five days, O157 declined 1,000-fold. This is good news. In a week, we could choke O157 from its favorite home — even if beef cattle were switched to a forage diet just seven days before slaughter, it would greatly reduce cross-contamination by manure of, say, hamburger in meat-packing plants. . . The United States Department of Agriculture does recognize the threat from these huge lagoons of waste, and so pays 75 percent of the cost for a confinement cattle farmer to make manure pits watertight, either by lining them with concrete or building them above ground. But taxpayers are financing a policy that only treats the symptom, not the disease, and at great expense. There remains only one long-term remedy, and it’s still the simplest one: stop feeding grain to cattle. . . [T]housands of acres of other produce are still downstream from these lakes of E. coli-ridden cattle manure." [NY Times; emphasis mine]
I don't eat a lot of spinach, but I had a bag of baby spinach in my refrigerator when this story broke and, even though it was probably fine, I'm very grateful I didn't eat it or feed it to my family.
