NYT op-ed on dairy/beef farm E. coli impact

[Guest guest]

Hello --

 

The below op-ed from the NYT is a great piece that highlights the fact

that spinach is being demonized while the real issue is -- no surprise

-- factory farming:

 

(Summary from last paragraph)

California's spinach industry is now the financial victim of an

outbreak it probably did not cause, and meanwhile, thousands of acres

of other produce are still downstream from these lakes of E.

coli-ridden cattle manure. So give the spinach growers a break, and

direct your attention to the people in our agricultural community who

just might be able to solve this deadly problem: the beef and dairy

farmers.

 

I recommend reading it so when discussing this issue with friends and

colleagues, you can make some of these points to them -- it's so easy

to blame an industry of vegetable growers instead of the real culprit,

the powerful beef and dairy industry.

 

A quick Google shows that the author, Nina Planck, is far from being

vegetarian, but her points at least in this article seem to be of help

to the veg message.

 

Karen

 

 

September 21, 2006

Op-Ed Contributor

The New York Times

Leafy Green Sewage

By NINA PLANCK

 

FARMERS and food safety officials still have much to figure out about

the recent spate of E. coli infections linked to raw spinach. So far,

no particular stomachache has been traced to any particular farm

irrigated by any particular river.

 

There is also no evidence so far that Natural Selection Foods, the

huge shipper implicated in the outbreak that packages salad greens

under more than two dozen brands, including Earthbound Farm, O Organic

and the Farmer's Market, failed to use proper handling methods.

 

Indeed, 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. The detective trail ultimately leads

back to a seemingly unrelated food industry — beef and dairy cattle.

 

First, some basic facts about this usually harmless bacterium: E. coli

is abundant in the digestive systems of healthy cattle and humans, and

if your potato salad happened to be carrying the average E. coli, the

acid in your gut is usually enough to kill it.

 

But the villain in this outbreak, E. coli O157:H7, is far scarier, 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? 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.

 

In 2003, The Journal of Dairy Science noted that up to 80 percent of

dairy cattle carry O157. (Fortunately, food safety measures prevent

contaminated fecal matter from getting into most of our food most of

the time.) Happily, the journal also provided a remedy based on a

simple 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. Such a measure might

have prevented the E. coli outbreak that plagued the Jack in the Box

fast food chain in 1993.

 

Unfortunately, it would take more than a week to reduce the

contamination of ground water, flood water and rivers — all irrigation

sources on spinach farms — by the E-coli-infected manure from cattle

farms.

 

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.

 

California's spinach industry is now the financial victim of an

outbreak it probably did not cause, and meanwhile, thousands of acres

of other produce are still downstream from these lakes of E.

coli-ridden cattle manure. So give the spinach growers a break, and

direct your attention to the people in our agricultural community who

just might be able to solve this deadly problem: the beef and dairy

farmers.

 

Nina Planck is the author of " Real Food: What to Eat and Why.''