Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
20
Produce in Public: Spinach, Safety, and
Public Policy
Douglas A. Powell, Casey J. Jacob, and
Benjamin Chapman
Introduction
In October 1996, a 16-month-old Denver girl drank Smoothie juice manufactured by
Odwalla Inc. of Half Moon Bay, California. She died several weeks later. Sixty-four
others became ill in several western U.S. states and British Columbia after drinking
the same juices, which contained unpasteurized apple cider contaminated with
Escherichia coli
O157:H7. Investigators believed that some of the apples used to make
the cider might have been insuffi ciently washed after falling to the ground and coming
into contact with deer feces (Leiss and Powell 1997).
Almost 10 years later, on Sept. 14, 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) announced that an outbreak of
E. coli
O157:H7 had killed a 77-year-old woman
and sickened 49 others (U.S. Food and Drug Administration 2006a). The FDA learned
from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Wisconsin health offi cials that the
outbreak may have been linked to the consumption of produce, and bagged fresh
spinach was identifi ed as a possible cause (Bridges 2006a).
In the decade between these two watershed outbreaks, almost 500 outbreaks of
foodborne illness involving fresh produce have been documented, publicized, and led
to some changes within the industry. Yet note what author Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
would call a tipping point (“a point at which a slow gradual change becomes irrevers-
ible and then proceeds with gathering pace”). Public awareness about produce-asso-
ciated risks did not reach a tipping point until the spinach
E. coli
O157:H7 outbreak
in the fall of 2006. At what point did suffi cient evidence exist to compel the fresh
produce industry to embrace the kind of change that the sector has heralded since
2007? And at what point will future evidence be deemed suffi cient to initiate future
changes in any industry?
Research on North American Outbreaks
Fresh fruits and vegetables were identifi ed as the source of several outbreaks of food-
borne illness in the early 1990s, particularly leafy greens (Table 20.1).
Although poor employee hygiene was responsible for over 40% of source-
identifi ed produce-related outbreaks (Bean and Griffi n 1990), produce can also be
contaminated due to internalization of pathogens both through the root system and fl esh
or stem scars. Evidence of infi ltration of bacteria into vegetables has been reported
(Bartz 1982; Bartz and Showalter 1981; Burnett and others 2000; Seo and Frank 1999;
Zhuang and others 1995), and substantial evidence exists to conclude that pathogens
can become incorporated into fresh produce. Previous research, for example, suggests
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