Grim headlines for organics, as the feds are linking Natural Selection Foods (Earthbound Farm) and its prepackaged fresh organic spinach to an outbreak of E. coli in many states.
If the linkage is confirmed, I bet we'll be hearing a lot from organics skeptics (including chief skeptic Dennis Avery), who'll do their darnedest to say that organic food on the whole is a scary thing (inputs like cow manure may contain contaminants and dirt is, you know, dirty!). And we'll probably be hearing too from smaller farmers, local-is-best-ers, and back-to-the-landers, who'll say, see!: organics doesn't work well on an industrial, Earthbound-size level. And what's up with packaged spinach in the first place?
Stay tuned.
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Comments
View as Flat
Jason D Scorse Posted 2:42 am
16 Sep 2006
organic chemicals and inputs can be bad and no one ever said they weren't
the number of disease outbreaks in organic v. non-organic should tell the proper story
the number of disease outbreaks linked to meat v. veggies is another thing that people should look at
who wants to tell people in cold climes that they can't eat spinach?
Assistant Professor
Monterey Institute of International Studies
http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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cmargulis Posted 1:43 pm
16 Sep 2006
while the company does pack organic spinach, it also packs many brands of "conventional" (ie, pesticide-laden) spinach. So far, no one seems to know if the current cases were from conventional or organically grown spinach (or both). See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/us/17spinach.html
www.centerforfoodsafety.org
http://www.cehca.org
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sloov Posted 11:53 pm
17 Sep 2006
"Natural Selection Foods says federal and state health inspectors confirmed that through manufacturing codes from packages of spinach that infected patients turned over. All the codes came from non-organic spinach."
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aavery Posted 3:02 am
18 Sep 2006
In fact, CFSAN says the investigation is moving from the packaging level down to the farm/field level because two different packing facilities have been implicated -- yet the source for spinach in both instances was Natural Selection farms.
So how did the O157:H7 get onto Natural Selection's farm? Could it not be organic manure for fertilizer? Naw, that's ridiculous. Manure is only the primary reservior of pathogenic bacteria. Why on earth would we think that manure-based fertilizer might contaminate food growing on the ground?
This investigation is far from over. Moreover, it will never (and cannot ever) definitively determine the source of the contamination. Manure will always be a high-probability suspect, regardless of what conclusions are made.
Alex
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aavery Posted 3:10 am
18 Sep 2006
excerpt of AP news story at above link:
[FDA spokeswoman Susan Bro] also dismissed a claim by Natural Selection Foods LLC, the country's largest grower of organic produce, that its organic spinach products had been cleared of suspicion. "The FDA has not cleared any products from the list and continues to recommend consumers avoid eating fresh spinach products," Bro said.
As I said, this has a long way to go and the organic industry is in obvious and self-serving damage control.
Alex
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JMG Posted 5:01 am
18 Sep 2006
And organic farming will always be a high-value target for petrochemical-fueled agribiz front groups masquerading as "think tanks"
------------------------------------------
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=14
Alex Avery
Alex Avery is the Director of Research and Education at the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute.
Avery's father, Dennis Avery is the Center's Director. Much of Alex Avery's time has been spent defending his father's claims, particularly those affecting organic food. Alex Avery is said to be writing a book on 'organic food myths'.
He is a co-author of, 'Organic Industry Groups Spread Fear for Profit' a report launched on September 21 2000. His co-authors included Graydon Forrer, Monsanto's former head of executive communications, although the report did not disclose that Forrer was a former Monsanto employee. The report was launched via NoMoreScares.com - a website which has now been withdrawn but which had as its contact the former Monsanto lobbyist and self-styled 'Junkman', Steven Milloy. The report is still availble via Milloy's current site: StopLabelingLies.com which claims to be dedicated to exposing 'examples of false and misleading food and other product labels and their associated marketing campaigns,' but whose real mission appears to be attacking organic foods on behalf of the biotech industry.
Amongst many other anti-organic pieces, Avery is the author of 'The Organic Food Industry: Smearing The Competition' - a paper published (13 March 2000) on Monsanto's Biotechnology Knowledge Center website, 'The Deadly Chemicals in Organic Food' (New York Post, June 2, 2001), and 'Organic farming caused dust bowl' (The Spokesman-Review.com, August 18, 2002).
A keen supporter of CS Prakash's AgBioView e-mail list, Alex Avery proposed to 'Fellow Agbioviewers' the issuing of a Joint Statement to counter another joint statement criticising the dubious character of the attacks on Quist and Chapela, authors of the Mexcian maize paper published in Nature. Avery claimed the original statement was 'being whored around by the anti-biotech activists'.
Avery dismissed Quist and Chapela's peer-reviewed study as 'junkscience' and argued that the attacks on the researchers were not unethical mudslinging, but 'exactly the type of rigorous debate over the truth that is the hallmark of the scientific process and discourse'. A joint statement duly followed and proved influential in the campaign to force Nature to retract the paper.
The attacks on Quist and Chapela were subsequently shown to have been initiated and fuelled by the biotech industry - in particular, by Monsanto, notably via its 'Andura Smetacek' e-mail front, and by its PR company, The Bivings Group, which operated the e-mail front 'Mary Murphy'. Avery followed 'Murphy' in making specific reference to Chapela's membership of the board of Pesticide Action Network North America and in claiming that this raised questions about Chapela's scientific work.
The Hudson Institute for whom Avery works has received funding from biotech companies Aventis, Dow, Monsanto, Novartis and Zeneca.
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:32 am
19 Sep 2006
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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aavery Posted 3:58 am
20 Sep 2006
Oh, and if you have knowledge of vast "petrochemical donations" to Hudson, I'd like to know what happened to them. I make less than the average teacher in my rural county.
My new book, The Truth About Organic Foods, will be out in early October. $18.95 via Amazon.com
All author-share proceeds from the sales of the book go directly to Hudson. (I won't make a nickel off my own book!) The book is thoroughly documented and sourced. You can't run from the truth!
Cheers,
Alex Avery
http://www.hudson.org
http://www.cgfi.org
http://www.milkismilk.com
Alex
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Tom Philpott Posted 6:39 am
20 Sep 2006
Scripps Howard News Service announced Jan. 13 that it's severing its business relationship with columnist Michael Fumento, who's also a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. The move comes after inquiries from BusinessWeek Online about payments Fumento received from agribusiness giant Monsanto (MON ) -- a frequent subject of praise in Fumento's opinion columns and a book.
In a statement released on Jan. 13, Scripps Howard News Service Editor and General Manager Peter Copeland said Fumento "did not tell SHNS editors, and therefore we did not tell our readers, that in 1999 Hudson recieved a $60,000 grant from Monsanto." Copeland added: "Our policy is that he should have disclosed that information. We apologize to our readers." In the Jan. 5 column, Fumento wrote that St. Louis-based Monsanto has about 30 products in the pipeline that will aid farmers, "but also help us all by keeping prices down and allowing more crops to be grown on less land."
He listed some of the products Monsanto has on tap: drought-resistant corn, crops that could reduce the need for environment-damaging fertilizers, and soybeans that might reduce heart disease.
In his career at Hudson, Fumento has carved out a specialty debunking critics of the agribusiness and biotechnology industries. In 1999, he says, he solicited $60,000 from Monsanto to write a book on the business. The book, entitled BioEvolution was published in 2003. A spokesman for Monsanto confirmed the payments to the Hudson Institute.
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dhwert Posted 6:52 am
20 Sep 2006
Really? The FDA has DNA fingerprinting for E. coli that can trace back to the source, so I'm guessing they can track it down reasonably well. Even if they can't find the contamination source, we can know which products were contaminated, and whether they were organic or conventional spinach, or both. That won't be hard to do. And even if manure is involved, that in itself doesn't prove whether it's organic or conventional. As you well know, many conventional farmers use manure as a fertilizer.
I do have to give you credit for not using this occasion to falsely accuse organics of being the source of this, since we don't know yet. Especially since Jay Lehr, longtime conventional ag cheerleader, has gone on record falsely claiming that this proves organic ag is unsafe (even though the FDA has not identified the source yet).
Yet the FDA is engaged in total overkill. Since they have pinpointed the problem to bagged fresh spinach in California, why are they recommending that consumers eat no fresh spinach whatsoever?
Dave
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JMG Posted 1:00 am
21 Sep 2006
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kmp Posted 1:35 am
21 Sep 2006
Where does this particularly virulent strain come from? It's not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. No, 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.
So, it would seem that pasture-fed beef cattle would not produce sufficient amounts of this strain to present a health problem, and thereby would eliminate the risk of contaminating groundwater or manure used for irrigation and fertilization of crops (organic or otherwise). Hmmm... seems to me that much (though not all) organic beef is also grass-fed beef, no?
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Bart Anderson Posted 5:27 am
21 Sep 2006
Two other interesting articles:
Farmer Andy Griffin writes why he is ordering spinach seeds
E. Coli Pervades Harvest Area (LA Times)
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dhwert Posted 2:37 am
22 Sep 2006
Dave
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roncastle Posted 7:04 am
22 Sep 2006
Good idea, cheers,
Ron Castle
Cheers.
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rara avis Posted 8:34 am
22 Sep 2006
This isn't the first time that A. Avery has misrepresented the facts in ongoing debates about manure use and food safety.
CMD posting_1
Info on D. avery misquoting CDC Dr. Tauxe as saying "Organic food means a food was grown in animal manure." Dr. Tauxe actually put out a press release to correct the situation, but this 'mis'quote has ended up in literally hundreds of newspaper articles.
CMD posting_2
CMD posting_3
The Center for Media and Democracy also has a great profile of the Hudson Institute including information on the history, current fellows and industry funding
CMD posting_4
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aavery Posted 2:15 am
28 Sep 2006
The family's lawyer, who I spoke with, is adamant that the family exclusively ate Earthbound organic salad products and there is NO question that the source was the Earthbound Farms Organic Baby Spinach. The O157:H7 has been positively matched to the overall outbreak strain -- the standard used by the FDA.
So the question now is: how did TWO processing lines at Natural Selections Foods LLC get contaminated? Could it be from poor manure management or organic farming practices? Naw, that just anti-organic spin, right?
Then how do you explain the recent findings of the group at the U of Minnesota that certified organic products were more than 3 times more likely to be contaminated with E. coli than conventional? (They found E. coli in 7% of certified organic produce vs. 2% of conventional, J of Food Protection 69(8):1928-1936, 2006) Hmmmm. Actual science showing greater E. coli risk from organic farming? Naw, must be anti-organic spin, right?
Finally, the claim by Ron Castle above that we fabricated the quote published in 1997 in the Journal of the American Medical Association by the head of the CDC's Foodborne Diseases branch is as absurd and completely false now as it was when the accusation was first made. Dr. Robert V. Tauxe stated"'Organic' means a food is grown in animal manure," and suggested more oversight/regulation of manure use in light of the increase in outbreaks linked to produce (JAMA 277:97-98).
Even Karen Charmen at PR Watch who made that accusation retracted the claim after we pointed out that Dr. Tauxe was quoted a full year prior to us EVER writing about the issue. And doesn't his comment seem awfully prescient at the moment?
I'm sorry for the family in Ohio and all the other families that have suffered in this outbreak.
Alex Avery
Hudson Institute, Center for Global Food Issues
Author of: The Truth About Organic Foods
to be released in late October 2006
Alex
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aavery Posted 5:23 am
28 Sep 2006
d-in-e-coli-outbreak/#respond
If you want to respond to this blog, got the link and post away! Cheers, Alex
Sept 28, 2006
Bad Organic Day Gets Worse: Organic brand directly implicated in E. coli outbreak
We've all been waiting for more information regarding the outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 caused by contaminated spinach grown and/or processed by Natural Selections Foods LLC of San Juan Bautista California. The information trickle out of the FDA and California authorities has provided precious little on which to make any sound conclusions.
Chief among the questions was whether the contamination was only among Natural Selection's non-organic brands - as the company claimed early on - or included organic brands too. The FDA said the issue was still open and that they had not cleared any of Natural Selections' brands, organic or conventional. Up until Tuesday, the only concrete information we had was that two bags of "Dole Baby Spinach" had tested positive for the presence of O157:H7 that matched the strain from the victims. One was found in New Mexico, one in Utah.
Now comes a lawsuit filed in federal court in Ohio directly implicating one of Natural Selections' organic brands. The lawsuit, filed by Roger Drummond and Laura Snider, says three family members became seriously ill after eating "Earthbound Farms Organic Baby Spinach Salad." The youngest child has permanent kidney damage and will require lifelong care. Importantly, the strain of E. coli has been positively matched to the strain found in other victims, according to the family's lawyer.
This development raises a number of important questions.
First, because Natural Selections Foods runs two separate processing lines - one for its conventional products and one for organic - the fact that products from both processing lines have been implicated may indicate that the problem is primarily at the field or farm level.
Second, if the problem is improper manure fertilizer management or other failure to follow Good Agricultural Practices, was it in just one field, or several?
Third, was the non-organic "Dole baby spinach" that was found to be contaminated growing using organic practices or conventional? The answer isn't immediately apparent. Fields must be managed organically for three full years before the products from the field can be marketed as organic. During that "transition period", the products must be sold as non-organic. Were the bags of contaminated "Dole baby spinach" transitional "organic" spinach?
We await answers and clarification as the investigation continues, but we urge the regulators to release as much information as soon as possible so that consumers can be assured that all key aspects of farming practices are been examined and explored.
Alex
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dhwert Posted 7:28 am
28 Sep 2006
It also says, "The prevalence of E. coli contamination by produce type was not significantly different between the three farm types during these 2 years.... These results indicate that the preharvest microbiological quality of produce from the three types of farms was very similar during these two seasons and that produce type appears to be more likely than farm type to influence E. coli contamination."
Not significantly different. That's the science, Alex, not some cherry-picked numbers that misrepresent the scientists' efforts. You don't get to grab a few mean values out of a paper and make some bogus "3 times more likely" claim. That's not the way the process works. (Well, I guess it runs in the family. That's exactly what your father did to arrive at his bogus "8 times more likely" claim.)
Here's the link to the abstract, for those who want to see the whole thing:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2006/00000...
Longitudinal Microbiological Survey of Fresh Produce Grown by Farmers in the Upper Midwest
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farmer Posted 8:11 pm
30 Sep 2006
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Tom Philpott Posted 11:59 pm
30 Sep 2006
It's all very simple, Farmer; it is people like you and I who are mucking everything up.
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aavery Posted 5:30 am
01 Mar 2007
Check out webcast here: http://www.calchannel.com/archive.php
Go to Tuesday, Feb 27 5th from the bottom.
How Now Brown Organic Cows?????
But I'm sure you all can figure out some way to weasle out of this with the usual "it was somebody elses fault" BS.
Cheers,
Alex
Alex
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