I heard on the news about grocery stores stripping all the bagged spinach off the shelves due to e-coli in several states. I thought e-coli was was a "meat thing"? What's up with that?


Life Is Good!

alive!

They are not sure yet as to how the e-coli actually got in the bags, but they are checking it out. This has happened several times with those bagged lettuce/spinach items. Nasty stuff!

Kim

E-coli gets onto produce because people don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom, then they handle fruits & vegetables so... voila! fecal microbes on the spinach.

I try to wash everything with soap & water before eating it, I can just imagine the hands of the people who touched it before I. Most dishwashing liquid rinses clean, in my experience, no soapy residue or flavor or anything. Just peace of mind and hopefully a few less nasty microbes.

E-coli does not only live in meat or or "dirty" hands, it is a bcteria found in nature, hence can pop up in many places. If e-coli was from " dirty" hands the bacteria would ne found on many different fruits/vegetables, but e-coli has always been a threat to spinach and other lettuces.

When I went to Mexico and ate salads there, I ended up coming home with e-coli! Not fun! A friend of mine just got back from Mexico and ended up with the same thing.

In Hawaii, where there was danger of the nasty "rat lung worm" passed by slugs onto produce, we washed everything with diluted food-grade hydrogen pyroxide. Now I'm not one to ever wash my food, but who knows, maybe I should start???

hmmm

I just read the actual article - it said they think it might be because farmers use animal manure, which they prob. shouldn't. And that washing the spinach won't help, because the e-coli is tightly bound to the spinach.

I assume this doesn't apply to the organic boxed spinach?

Yes, E-coli contmaination in vegetables and fruit is usually due to some kind of animal manure or animal derived products in the cultivation of the crop.

E-coli is indeed found in nature, but in very diluted amounts. It is concentrated in the gut and tissues of sick animals, and if animal manure is used, it can also contmainate produce.

Packaged produce tends to be more problematic than bulk since it is in an enclosed atmosphere and it is also usually not as fresh.

Cheers,
J

The outbreak was traced to Natural Selection Foods, based in San Juan Bautista, California, and the company has voluntarily recalled products containing spinach.
They are sold under the brand names Rave Spinach, Natural Selection Foods, Dole, Earthbound Farm, Trader Joe's, Ready Pac and Green Harvest.

An alternative to soap is to soak produce in diluted apple cider vinegar or white vinegar for 15 minutes, and then rinse it well. THe vinegar kills microbes and any eggs or parasites on the produce will be stunned by the acids and let go, allowing them to easily rinse off.

WOW! Thanks Purenkind! I have been waiting to see where the source came from! I have some boxed Earthbound Arugula, that just went in the trash! I had been wanting some Arugula all last wek and couldn't find it at any of my grocerys, so I did settle for Earthbound Organic Arugula..We have to be so careful! And I don't wash my veggies as a rule..a little but never with soap..maybe now with Vinager as suggested earlier.

all this is just another reason to grow our own food. used to be just the meat industy that people had to concern themselves about. now it's greens, and washing them won't help. it's a scary world we live in.

i keep dreaming about a raw food commnity where like-minded people can live together and grow their food in common gardens, raise their children, live simply and peacefully and just be good to one another..

Hi! I ate some fresh raw spinach a day before they came out with the bad news. It was loose, from Produce Junction in Pa. The manager assured me I most likely was safe as it was not bagged and he does not get his spinach from that source. But he said I could return the rest and get another veg in place of it. It is also likely to be in a mixed salad from a restaurant, etc. God bless us all!
It is distressing to think that no food is 100 % safe. It can make us all neurotic, when not even vegens/ vegetarians are safe! LOL Jan from Pa.

blissmummy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In Hawaii, where there was danger of the nasty
> "rat lung worm" passed by slugs onto produce, we
> washed everything with diluted food-grade hydrogen
> pyroxide. Now I'm not one to ever wash my food,
> but who knows, maybe I should start???
>
> hmmm


Yes, you should ALWAYS wash your food. Unless you want to eat the stuff that the guy who picked your produce was handling just before he picked your produce.

Just buy organic spinach. There are rules in place to protect organic food from bacterial contamination.

-Ryan
radicalvitality.com

I would hope organic is safe... except Earthbound Farms boxed salads are organic, and they were recalled.

And how is it possible that a non-organic farm is growing organic produce, anyway?

sunshine79 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would hope organic is safe... except Earthbound
> Farms boxed salads are organic, and they were
> recalled.

If the organic farm was next to a poulty farm, and E coli gets in the soil, then it can get into the organic produce.

> And how is it possible that a non-organic farm is
> growing organic produce, anyway?

There are many farms growing produce organically, but haven't yet gone through the organic certification process. This could because they can't afford it (Whole Foods is setting a side a couple of million for low interest loans to help small local farms get organic certification), or they having been keep records long enough (they need to prove they haven't used chemicals for X number of years before they can get certified - some cases where they haven't used chemicals for decades, but only kept records or have been inspected for a couple of years).

I look out labels like 'pesticide free' on produce at my local farmers market, this normally means a farm is selling organic produce as conventional grown, because they aren't allowed to claim it's organic because they lack the certification.

Cheers,
Ian.

Oh thanks for that info, Ian!

which actually brings me to another question I always wonder about when I go to Whole Foods - I notice that most of their produce is labeled "conventional" - is it truly conventional or is it not-yet certified organic produce? I would hope they wouldn't be stocking the same conventional crap as regular grocery stores...?

when is this poison spinach thing going to end?? i miss my spinach. i usually eat a couple bags each week.

I wish I could have my own garden. Produce tastes even better when you've nurtured it with your own hands.

Here's some info from Nora on her RawSchool board about the e. coli scare:
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Re: OT: the spinach farce - p.s.

It's very important to note, as well, that when these people who got sick started experiencing symptoms, they further compounded their problems by seeking medical attention. Acute symptoms are always about the body eliminating accumulated poisons that otherwise threaten survival. When they occur, having them diagnosed and then suppressed is the worst possible course of action. Fortunately, most people who make this mistake manage to survive, but many don't, especially children, old people, and those who are already teetering on the brink of death (so-called "immune-suppressed" individuals). When people die, the sickness gets blamed. In reality, acute illness is constructive and never kills anyone. It is the continuation of the harmful practices that made the symptoms necessary in the first place, in addition to administered remedies, that cause death.
I hope everyone can begin to appreciate the enormity of the scam that's being perpetrated with these e-coli scares. The medical profession and their duped cheerleaders in the media are ones who should be feared and avoided, not microscopic lifeforms.
Regards,
Nora

Thanks for posting that Bryan.

I'm still skeptical, though. The reason this e.coli has been so scary is that the mutant, lethal strain of e.coli was responsible, and if I remember correctly it was we humans with our factory farmed animals who are to blame for the mutation to begin with. Prior to the 70's, e. coli wasn't considered deadly.

Now I know there's also another school of thought on micro-organisms which says we don't "catch" things but rather develop them....... I'm not sure which exactly is correct; I'll try to do some research on this when I get some time, I'm really curious.

I really miss my boxed salads! So convenient.

Given that thousands and perhaps millions of people ate that spinach without problems tells me that it was compromised individuals who had problems after eating the spinach. If it were lethal, many more people would be sick and dying. One person died. Compare that with Vioxx, where 27 thousand people died from heart attacks and caridiac problems before they took the arthritis drug off the market.

As for bacterial and viral mutations, what is going on is that the antibiotics are getting pretty much useless as the human population is exposed to them more and more through their abundant overusage, and through the food supply in the form of animal products. People in the US have so much exposure to antibiotics that their bodies no longer stop and suppress symptoms when the antibiotics are consumed.

This is explained in the media by the germs and viruses mutating to circumvent the antibiotics. While mutation, or simple survival of the fittest might be the cause for insects no longer dying from pesticides, this is not the case for antibiotics.

In general, all drugs quit working after long term usage. This is because the body gets used to them, and no longer responds to their poisoning effect. what the body does do is to take those poisons and store them in fat cells in the body. At some point, there is so much poison in the body, that cancer develops.

Yes, this is absolutely true - antibiotic overuse is a huge problem, creating drug-resistant bacteria. The other problem antibiotics cause is allergies & asthma. Just recently (November 2005 I think) some scientific studies were published showing a direct cause & effect relationship between antibiotics & allergies.

Purenkind said:

"i keep dreaming about a raw food commnity where like-minded people can live together and grow their food in common gardens, raise their children, live simply and peacefully and just be good to one another.."

Dear Purenkind, do you get the daily inspirations from the garden diet? Storm and Jinjee are talking about setting up 2 raw vegan communities in the States.
Regs
Anna

Here's an article posted by C. Dove on the vegsource board about e.coli and where it's coming from:
-------------------

From: C. Dove (cache-mtc-ae01.proxy.aol.com)
Subject: Grains......Again
Date: September 22, 2006 at 3:02 pm PST

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.’’

anna,

no, i don't get the daily inspirations, but maybe i'll start! where are jinjee and storm thinking of setting up these communities?

Bryan, thanks so much for posting that article!

It's exactly the kind of info I was looking for!

I HAVE TRIED IN THE PAST TO GET FOOD GRADE HYDROGEN PYROXIDE, WHERE DO YOU BUY IT,
I'M IN MIAMI FL

JAN

That's pretty interesting stuff, Bryan.

I personally think that if your immune and digestive systems are strong, you don't have to worry about some green leaves that might have a few e. coli bacteria on themm. One person dead...WOW! Sheesh. Not betting on me being the next one.

I usually eat my produce, without washing them, first...too lazy. When I eat live foods, even unwashed, I never had a stomachache. Before raw-foodism came to me, I kept having digestive problems (diarrhea and constipation) from eating meat. I'm totally convinced that bacteria can't thrive in a healthy person.