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Hiding the Ball on E. coli: What We Now Know About Spinach and Other Leafy Vegetables Grown in California

Frank's-head-shot1.gif
By Frank Pecarich
Retired Soil Scientist

In the three months since my last article and six months since the first report of the September, 2006, Monterey County spinach E. coli outbreak, not much apparently has been learned by government regulators, scientists and experts. Despite several California State Senate hearings attempting to fact-find and get information from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the State Department of Agriculture and State Department of Health Safety, we basically end up with a lot of officials in suits shrugging their shoulders.

One thing they are pretty sure of however is that there will be another outbreak of E. coli in fresh leafy vegetables from the Salinas Valley in 2007. The fact that they are so sure that this event will occur and yet they have no idea of how it is occurring is a logic-leap that defies measurement.

I have written repeatedly and voluminously about the obvious smoking gun that exists by having 12,000 acres of vegetables – including leafy greens – overhead sprinkler irrigated with tertiary treated sewage water. I have gained the attention of food safety experts all over the nation who correspond with me and offer encouragement on keeping this information about pathogens in irrigation water in the foreground of our discussions. At the same time, virtually all of these experts have requested anonymity should their employers and financial benefactors become angry that they were consorting with someone who might reveal the secrets.

I started this article writing quest as a scientist interested in getting some rather obvious and yet important information to the media and public. I have found that there are many groups out there who do not want more sunshine on these facts.

Let’s Review

Undaunted by this resistance, I will retrospectively review in this article the highlights of what has transpired these past three months. Let’s first establish some important “givens” in these discussions.

To begin, let’s remember that E. coli 0157:H7 is one of the disease and death causing pathogens that can survive and pass successfully through sewage treatment plants and “escape” into the natural environment. Secondly, these pathogens are incredibly hardy in the environment and have successfully lived for weeks and months on vegetation, soil surfaces and in water.

The federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has stated that twenty-two pathogen outbreaks have been linked to California-grown leafy greens in the past 12 years, and at least nine of those were traced to Salinas Valley produce.

There is a definite time correlation between the initiation of Monterey County’s use of treated sewage water as an irrigation source and the huge increase in pathogen outbreaks with Salinas Valley vegetables. About 384 outbreaks linked to produce occurred in the six years between 1998 and 2004, which is about twice the 190 that happened in the 24 years from 1973 to 1997. This information was provided by Dr. Michael Lynch at this week’s FDA hearing in Oakland, California. Lynch is a doctor with the Foodborne and Diarrheal Disease Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

So in a period of six years there was a 200% increase in the number of pathogen outbreaks compared to the previous 24 years? I ask rhetorically, doesn’t that fact connote a problem? Isn’t it interesting that the year 1998, the beginning year of this 200% increase, is the same year that Monterey County initiated its sewage treated water irrigation program on 12,000 acres?

New Clarity in Connecting the Dots

In the press this week there were some important revelations. Because the food industry is continuing to play “hide the ball” with the facts, the interested public must pull pieces and bits of information together to get the whole story. In a Ventura County Star news article this week Len Richardson, editor of California Farmer Magazine was quoted raising several questions about the grower/food industry plan for voluntary self-regulation of leafy green vegetable production. Richardson said, “"At least they're trying to come up with a plan, but it falls pretty short of being effective or scientific."

Richardson then made a point I have stressed for these months by saying, “The new plan calls for the generic E. coli test, which is not nearly sufficient enough. You need the E. coli 0157:H7 test," he said, adding “the cost of that test, considering how important it is, is not all that expensive."

Richardson is pointing out that current regulations at the state and federal level do not require sewage treatment facilities or farmers to test for E. coli 0157:H7 so naturally, they don’t do it. When you read that the sewage treatment facilities are meeting federal or state standards it is because those standards are low and do not cover the pathogens infecting our populace in these outbreaks. What good, I ask rhetorically, is that assurance?

At the FDA hearing this week Dr. Lynch said, “outbreaks have definitely increased”. In this latest spinach outbreak, investigators collected about 850 environmental samples - including soil and water - but could not pinpoint the source of contamination in the spinach E. coli outbreak, said Barbara Cassens, of the FDA's San Francisco District office.

Are the Innocent Being Blamed?

It was reported widely in the news these past weeks that “people involved in the investigation have said a pasture where the E. coli was located is in San Benito County, near fields of spinach grown by Mission Organics”. This 50-acre farm being so mysteriously referred to in the news is run by Otto Kramm, Mission Organics' chief operating officer, and so far it’s the only field that has been publicly identified as a source of the specific strain of E. coli O157:H7 found among contaminated bags of spinach.

In an article by the Salinas Californian, Kramm was mystified as to why his farm was being isolated as the cause of the outbreak. Three other, unidentified ranches in San Benito and Monterey counties have been investigated and found to have strains of E. coli linked to the outbreak, federal and state health inspectors have repeatedly said. It was Kramm’s fields that caused FDA and state officials to triumphantly announce this winter that they had found cow pies and that wild pigs had somehow transported the E.coli from the cow pies to the spinach fields.

However, David Acheson, chief medical officer for food safety at the FDA, said last week that he doesn't know exactly how the spinach became contaminated. “We can't rule out the possibility the contaminated spinach came from more than one place," Acheson said. Then he went on to confirm that the long promised FDA-State report on this outbreak was still a ways off from being made public. The news story said, “the FDA's final report is due out soon, though Acheson said he didn't know when”.

Meanwhile Mr. Kramm told the news reporter that evidence shows pigs headed south toward neighboring vineyards and likely never set foot on the parcel where his spinach was growing last August. “No tracks were found near spinach”. He went on to say, “pigs are drawn to those vineyards because they like to eat grapes, he said, and haven't ever caused much damage to his crops. “I agree pigs ran through the ranch," Kramm said, "but they didn't run through the spinach field."

So, the San Benito County resident farmer says that pigs didn’t do it and I believe him. (In spite of the ample opportunity here to come forth with “when pigs fly” humor, I will resist.) Let’s move on and look at some more of the bits and pieces of information revealed recently in the media.

It’s Going to Happen Again

Medical scientists have long known that the number of reported illnesses and even deaths attributed to E. coli 0157:H7 have been grossly underestimated and reported. This week at the FDA hearing some new light was shed on that issue. While it has been popularly reported that 200 cases of illness were reported in this outbreak, it turns out that the scientists consider the number to be far higher. Barbara Cassens said the spinach outbreak affected about 4,000 individuals although about 200 were ill enough to report their symptoms to physicians.

At the March 20 FDA hearing in Oakland, Dr. David Acheson said given the history of past food borne illness outbreaks, there are no guarantees that food safety efforts on farms and in processing facilities will prevent contamination of fresh produce in 2007. He said, “"Is the food supply any safer today than it was in September? No, I don't believe it is. We are looking at a distinct probability of an outbreak linked to leafy greens in 2007," he said. "I hope not, but I am a pragmatist. I would be fooling consumers if I said problems solved, don't worry. Problem is not solved.”

That’s not good news for the rest of us but it is exactly what the FDA has been saying all along. That has to make us conclude that the FDA knows a lot more than they are revealing to the public.

Solution or Distraction?

Let’s take a look at news that just broke that is a good example of a distraction looking like a solution. In the March 22nd Sacramento Bee there was a story about UC Davis’ Dr. Trevor Suslow and his theory that the use of winery waste on farms, meant to prevent toxic outbreaks, may be doing the opposite.

The article pointed out that “Trevor Suslow, an authority on the region's vegetable farming, said his suspicions grew from an experiment he conducted three years ago at the invitation of Salinas grower George Fontes.
According to the story, “State health investigators have implicated Fontes' lettuce and spinach fields in three consecutive E. coli outbreaks.”

The article further stated. “Suslow found that the test plots Fontes treated with composted winery waste -- a concentrate of grape skins, seeds and stems called pomace -- consistently had the highest levels of bacteria compared with vegetable fields enriched with composted manure and those left untreated. "I felt (pomace) was a potential risk factor that needed to be looked at." While none of the bacteria was of the deadly type -- Escherichia coli 0157: H7 -- Suslow suspects that the high residual sugars that make pomace especially good for plant growth also could promote growth of the toxin. E. coli 0157 doesn't naturally occur in pomace. But it could be introduced to pomace in compost yards, which may include raw manure. The disease-causing microbe lives in the gut of cattle and other warm-blooded animals and is found in their feces.”

The Sacramento Bee said, “Fontes, president of Comgro Inc., said he has since improved safeguards against cross-contamination.” "We get better every year," said Fontes, a fourth-generation farmer.

Then comes that “duh moment” when the Bee article says, “Suslow's testing and observations underscore a key question that pops up ever louder with each new outbreak traced to "the nation's salad bowl": Is there something specific to the Salinas Valley environment or farming practices that boosts or sustains fecal bacteria?”

“Is there something specific” and unique to the Salinas Valley environment or farming practices that boosts or sustains fecal bacteria? Duh…

The answer, of course, is yes and it’s not winery pomace. Let’s go look at the 2003 San Mateo County retirement facility spinach outbreak report written by the California Department of Health Services. In that report you’ll find information about Chinn Ranch #8 with the grower identified as Comgro, Inc., Mr. Fontes’ company. That report points out that composted grape pomace was spread on the fields and quoted Mr. Fontes as providing that information.

What the State report also said and missing from any discussion so far is that the irrigation water used on these plants was from the Castroville Sea Water Intrusion Project (CSIP). In fact, the report identifies the CSIP turnout used as # 266.

So, now we know that UC Davis’ Trevor Suslow has identified a potential growing medium for E. coli 0157:H7 in winery pomace and we know it is used as a soil amendment in some parts of Salinas Valley. Suslow admitted in the article that he found no E. coli 0157:H7 in the pomace but what if he had a source that could supply E. coli 0157:H7 every time the sprinker irrigation system was turned on? That E. coli 0157:H7 flowing out of the sprinkler head would receive a nice welcome in the pomace I suppose.

The pomace could provide what microbiologists call a “nutrient” environment. That would allow the E. coli 0157:H7 to survive for very long periods even though we know that it can survive long periods on a vegetable leaf particularly if it is supported in a biofilm environment.

It’s Not the Animals, It’s the People

The one constant in all of this is not birds, pigs, rodents, cows or wine pomace. The one constant is that Monterey County irrigates 12,000 acres of vegetables with treated sewage effluent that scientists say can carry E. coli 0157:H7 as well as many other toxic and pathogenic materials. We can scientifically look high and low but at the end of the day the simple truth is that the “given” in this scientific review is that we are contaminating ourselves with our irrigation water, pure and simple.

Frank Pecarich retired from the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the US Bureau of Reclamation in 1987. During his 26 year federal career he worked as a soil scientist with the USDA on the now- published Soil Survey for Monterey County. He lives in Ventura County.

Related articles that have been published by the California Progress Report by Mr. Pecarich include:
E. coli: Why Monterey County Made a Poor Decision on the Type of Water to Use for Irrigation of Their Croplands

E. coli: Is There a Cover-up of Poor Decisions on the Type of Water Used for Irrigation of Croplands in the Salinas Valley?

Why Do We Abandon Science in Favor of PR? Orange County Follies

Monterey Cover-up on Cause of Spinach and Lettuce Contamination?
Deadly Pathogens and Science vs. PR and Politics: Spinach in Monterey County

Arnold Schwarzenegger and the “I Heart Spinach” Program or Has the “Terminator” Become the “Germ-a-nator”?

Irrigating Your Vegetables With Treated Sewage Water? Still Not a Good Idea if You Are Concerned About E. Coli

Posted on March 23, 2007

Comments

I've read a couple articles on food safety that said salmonella in produce has been on the rise too. Could that be caused by reclaimed irrigation water also?

Also, I read the following article last September (http://www.ninaplanck.com/index.php?article=e_coli) that ran as an op-ed in the NY Times, and the author also states that E. Coli O157:H7 is very prevelant the gut of grain fed cattle. That led me to wonder about the proximity of the cattle farms to the spinich fields in central CA.

There was a report last year from the Central Coast Water Board that discussed the extreme pollution of the waterways in the area, and one of the things they noted was that manure was "lining the banks of channels and tributaries to the Salinas River." So again I was wondering, are the field low lying enough that they could potentially become contaminated by flooding? If these waterways are in violation of already low national standards, wouldn't that put the crops in nearby fields at risk? If it's in the rivers, it seems logical to me that it could end up in the fields.

Did all the bad spinich come from Monterey County? I thought it was more widespread than that. I remember reading an article that said they use deep well water to irrigate fields in Salinas County. Could that become contaminated by cattle?

Can you tell I've thought about this way too much? Please feel free to confirm or debunk any of my random thoughts.

Posted by: Terry at March 23, 2007 06:48 PM

Terry:

You have asked some good questions and I will use the opportunity to reinforce a message we are trying to send. The message, in general, is “don’t get distracted by a pseudo-solution or cause”

Most people connect the cows-to-human part of the E.coli 0157:H7 life cycle as you have done as well as Nina Planck in her September 2006 piece you referenced in your post above. What many then leave out is the link from infected humans to uninfected humans.

That link is provided by our sewage systems and sewage treatment plants that “recycle” treated effluent back into our environment. As you can learn from my writings, Monterey County does that when they provide for the sprinkler irrigation of leafy green vegetables with treated sewage effluent in a project covering 12,000 acres (18.75 square mile area) called the CSIP or the Castroville Sea Water Intrusion Project.

All those people sick from E.coli 0157:H7 use a toilet. The latest estimate is that 4000 were sick from the spinach outbreak alone. Couple that E. coli source with sewage treatment facilities that have animal slaughter facilities as inflow along with all those hospitals that simply flush their wastes -- as well as the toilets -- into the sewage system and you have a massive source of pathogens going from infected humans and animals to other healthy humans.

As I said in an earlier article:

“In addition to humans who are sick with drug resistant pathogens such as E. coli 0157H:7 passing their contaminated feces into the sewage system from their homes and the hospitals, blood and fecal material are flushed away from animal slaughter houses that can be contaminated with pathogens, like E. coli 0157H:7. Add to that source, the hospital treatment centers that have their sewage flushed into the local waste water treatment facility and you have a deadly toxic “Witch’s caldron” environment in the local sewer treatment system.”

To further illustrate this problem, a research study entitled, “Hospital effluent: A source of multiple drug-resistant bacteria” was done by V. Chitnis, D. Chitnis, S. Patil and Ravi Kant. This project was carried out to study the spread of “multiple drug-resistant” (MDR) bacteria from hospital effluent to the municipal sewage system. The study showed that MDR bacteria population in hospital sewage effluents ranged from 0.58 to 40% for ten hospitals studied while it was less than 0.00002 to 0.025% for sewage samples from the residential areas. In other words, there were 1000+ times more drug resistant pathogens in the hospital sewage compared to the average residence.

While it has been popularly reported that 200 cases of illness were reported in this outbreak, it turns out that the scientists consider the number to be far higher. Barbara Cassens of the FDA said the spinach outbreak affected about 4,000 individuals although only about 200 were ill enough to report their symptoms to physicians. Those 4000 still contributed their infectious pathogens to the sewage system.

A recent annual estimate of acute diarrhea from FoodNet data, reported 360 million cases. In most of these cases, the cause (food, water, other) is unknown. Old estimates of food borne-related cases range from 6½ to 81 million per year. A 1987 estimate of food borne related deaths, based on educated estimates but not hard data, totaled 9,100. Physicians and researchers have explained that the lack of a good surveillance system is the reason there is so little reliable data. They note that people who become sick may or may not see a physician. The physician may or may not obtain a stool culture; and if the physician does obtain a culture and confirm the cause of disease, that result may or may not be reported to health departments. As a result, researchers characterize the number of reported cases as "the tip of the iceberg."

The scientific literature described a physician survey performed in 1996. Out of 5,000 physicians surveyed, 44% had ordered a stool culture for the last patient with diarrhea, and 77% had done so if the patient had blood in the diarrhea. In a 1996 survey of 9,000 people, 11% reported having a diarrheal illness in the preceding month, and 8% of those individuals visited a health care provider for the illness; only 20% who visited a health care provider gave stool samples. Further, not all cases are ultimately reported to the health department, resulting in incomplete data.

In that same study Terry, the data showed how it is possible to use FoodNet data (e.g., 2,000 reported cases of Salmonella) and multipliers to arrive at an estimate of 1,400,000 cases of Salmonella in the United States.

As I said in my closing paragraph in this article, “It’s Not the Animals, It’s the People”

Posted by: Frank Pecarich at March 26, 2007 01:00 PM

Thank you, Frank. That's quite interesting, and I appreciate your elaboration.

Posted by: Terry at March 26, 2007 04:56 PM

Frank,
I am an organic greens grower not located in Monterey County, so I've been following this issue with interest. As much as I appreciate the idea that the source of the E. Coli contamination is tertiary waste water, I just don't see your math adding up. While there certainly are thousands of people infected with H157 each year who go undetected, if you do the math and simply divide that number by the number of counties in the U.S. states (oversimplification, but still), you end up with just a handful of individuals in Monterey County who may be infected. Put their waste into a mixture with tens of thousands of uninfected people, water it down, and then sprinkle it over 14,000 acres. The average farm sprinkler puts out 7 gallons of water a minute, and each acres has 100 sprinklers. The dilution of that handful of infected people's waste is vast.
Then consider that the vast majority of feedlot cattle and pigs (I've seen a 70% figure mentioned) are hosting H157 E. Coli in their guts. Cows produce 5-10 times as much waste in a day as humans, and modern dairies are now over 500 cows. Common sense certainly points to this as the source of the problem.
Once the E. Coli is released into the environment by the cows, there are numerous ways for it to move around. If you don't believe that wild pigs eat cow manure, you've never spent much time with pigs. I'm not saying I believe the pigs were the vector, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility either. And while I am a farmer and know Otto Kramm personally, I would never make a claim to know whether wild pigs had passed through my fields. They mostly forage at night, and don't leave tracks if the ground is dry.

There is a cover up here, but it is not about human waste. Everyone involved in this issue on the government level is refusing to address animal manure as a pollutant. Instead, they are focusing on the growers. Why? All you need to do is look at the economics. Cattle and dairy are much bigger industries than the vegetable growers, and there is simply no support from the ag industry to go after the real source of the problem. H157 E. Coli should be considered a dangerous pollutant and regulated as such, but that's just not going to happen.

Posted by: Paul Underhill at April 7, 2007 11:22 AM

Paul:

Let’s start with your friend and fellow farmer Otto Kramm and his claim that the pigs didn’t traverse his fields and that the vineyards beyond his fields were the focus of the pigs attention because of their taste for grapes. Kramm was quoted by the Salinas Californian reporter as saying that “no tracks were found near spinach … they didn’t run through the spinach fields.”

Now you say you know Mr. Kramm and unless you are willing to call him a liar, I think we have to believe him when he says tracks were not in his fields of spinach. As to your claim that pigs “don't leave tracks if the ground is dry”, let’s remember that its spinach that we’re talking about here. Since you are a vegetable grower you should know that spinach is a fragile crop in terms of its water needs. Spinach is a quick-growing, shallow-rooted crop that is not tolerant of water stress. Because it is so susceptible to leaf evapo-transpiration of water, the crop is irrigated frequently in order to keep the plant turgid and free from wilt. That requires a very moist soil environment and that moist soil would most certainly show any pig tracks throughout the growing season. Additionally, if you understand wild pigs you also understand that they are highly destructive foragers and tear up the plant/soil environment with wild abandon. If they were in those fields, Mr. Kramm and the FDA/State inspectors would have known and yet they conceded throughout the investigation that the closest they could place the cow pies to the spinach was almost a mile away and they had no explanation that was empirically supportable that told them how the E. coli 0157:H7 got into Mr. Krumm’s spinach.

Now let’s talk about pathogens, human health and microbiology. Your math on how many diseased individuals in Monterey exist is interesting. But you might want to re-read my articles, particularly with regard to other sources of the E. coli 0157:H7 strain as well as the impact of biofilms on the spread of disease. Increasingly it is becoming clear that pathogenic biofilms are an obvious source of irrigation disease-causing bacteria. The farm irrigation environment, particularly pressurized water systems such as used by high volume overhead sprinklers, are an obvious source of pathogens especially when your water source already contains disease-causing bacteria and virus.

See Paul, when you pump your farm water from a creek that has surface water from Lake Berryessa as you do, you are using some of the cleanest water in the nation. Any biofilms that might be created in your piping systems on your farms – and there will be biofilms – are likely to be disease-free. Now notice I didn’t say there wouldn’t be bacteria in your piping system, I said it was likely to be non-pathogenic bacteria. Now Paul, if you were to put tertiary-treated sewage effluent into your farm system instead of Lake Berryessa water every day as they have in Monterey County for the past 10 years, your biofilms would be loaded with pathogens just waiting to break away from their attachment to the inside of the pipes and joints and then flow through the sprinkler head right onto your lettuce and spinach.

See Paul, it’s the quality of the water the farmer uses that makes the difference and yours is high quality and Monterey County CSIP is very low quality.

We agree that there is a cover-up of the facts. Now we will simply have to wait until the next E. coli leafy green vegetable outbreak and see if the people can finally force the food industry and our government to protect us from our own self-imposed food safety terror.

Posted by: Frank Pecarich at April 7, 2007 06:27 PM

qwer

Posted by: qwer at April 10, 2007 12:54 PM

Has anyone stopped to think about the fact that Monsanto's main method of bio-engineering involves mutating a strain of e. coli to carry desired genetic traits into a cell through invasion?

Perhaps one of the many reasons we are seeing more e. coli breakouts is due to the prevalence of Monsanto's crops in our nation? I think it at least bears some looking into.

Posted by: irondawn at May 18, 2007 12:46 PM

Interesting comments.
My interest in the E.coli 0157:H7 topic was sparked again after watching CNNs May 19/20th, 2007 presentation by Dr. Sanjay Gupta called DANGER: Poisoned Food "What You Eat Could Make You Sick"

The CNN web site contains an interactive USA map regarding the various E. coli 0157:H7 outbreaks that have occurred across the nation.
http://edition.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/siu/shows/poisoned.food/index.html

My point is, do all this other non-California locations (non-Castroville Sea Water Intrusion Project (CSIP)) have the same problem with irrigation "treated sewage water" ?

Maybe the answer is : YES

If the answer is : NO, then what is the common link???

Also think about this, small farming families have historically had there vegetable gardens close to cattle farm yards. They have used well rotted manure as fertilizer for centuries (sometimes even not well rotted).
Driving through the French country side, I was even surprised to see farm homes actually attached to barns!
My question is, why does there not seem to be a historic problem with the boogie-germ E.coli 0157:H7 ?
Maybe pre-technical society wouldn't be able to specifically identify the problem germ, but their ancient methods seemed to quite often identify what was acceptable hygiene to maintain health and what wasn't.
So what has changed ? Why do we now have this problem ?

Maybe this article has the answer as to why it is now with us:

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ecoli.php
E. coli 0157:H7 and Genetic Engineering

Notice the first line comments:
"The food-borne pathogen E. coliO157:H7 has been sequenced. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho asks whether genetic engineering might have contributed towards its emergence."

I praise Retired Soil Scientist, Frank Pecarich for his diligent efforts.

I'll conclude by wondering if the real answer to the E.coli 0157:H7 problem in California will ultimately be found by gathering knowledge about it from many parts of the world.

Posted by: H. Andre at May 21, 2007 04:32 PM

So, you're implying that the E. coli on Otto Kramm's farm came from treated wastewater used for irrigation? Isn't Paicines (where his ranch is located) on the other side of the Gabilan Range from Salinas, in San Benito County? According to two different websites, reclaimed water is only being used in a small portion of the Salinas valley, a long way from Paicines:

http://www.mrwpca.org/about/svc_area.php

http://www.monterey.courts.ca.gov/grand_jury_report_1999/castro.htm

I haven't seen anything about San Benito county farms using tertiary treatment water, except for this article stating that they were looking into it:

http://www.metroactive.com/metro-santa-cruz/05.30.07/water-0722.html

That's an awful long way to pump reclaimed water, especially for another county. Please let me know if I'm missing something.

Posted by: Kris Ingram at June 11, 2007 02:03 PM

I'm sitting here at my computer in severe pain in my left front stomach.Seems about 3 weeks ago we started eating a lot more salads.I was reading your article,so I checked my reefer and found the leafy greens are from Salinas Ca.The green "Baby Spinich" marked "washed and ready to use ,are fresh express brand.I'm thinking about visiting the hospital.My name is Dan Needham and I live in Justin Tx.

Posted by: Danny G. Needham at August 25, 2007 02:57 PM

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