[USCC] Fwd: Med News Net: Explaining how E. coli reached spinach fields not an easy task

[Jim McNelly]

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>Explaining how E. coli reached spinach fields not an easy task
>
>
>Disease/Infection News
>Published: Monday, 16-Oct-2006
>
>
>It appears that California State health 
>officials are at a loss to explain the source of 
>a nationwide outbreak of E. coli food poisoning.
>
>Despite the fact that manure from cattle living 
>close to the spinach farm in California's 
>Salinas Valley is the suspected source of the 
>outbreak, it seems that the manure cannot be 
>definitively proven to be the original site of the toxic E. coli bacteria.
>
>The E. coli bacteria strain found in the spinach 
>apparently matches the bacteria strain which has 
>killed three Americans and sickened 200 others 
>but the evidence is not conclusive according to 
>Kevin Reilly, deputy director of the California Department of Health Services.
>
>Reilly says they have failed to explain how the 
>bacteria found it's way to the spinach field 
>from a nearby cattle grazing pasture.
>
>The suspect ranch is thought to cover several 
>thousand acres around a spinach field separated 
>from cattle by a paved road and fences and the 
>manure samples were found a half-mile to a mile 
>from the field leased by the rancher to a spinach grower.
>
>Dean Cliver, a microbiologist and professor of 
>food safety at the University of California, 
>says the cow manure is an important clue, but 
>they must now look at how agricultural practices 
>have allowed the E. coli to travel a half-mile 
>to a mile from pasture to spinach field.
>
>Cliver says the same E. coli strain in the cow 
>dung and in the spinach may be the result of 
>some form of contamination which is much further away in other cattle pastures.
>
>Cliver suggests that as cattle have been found 
>close to a field in as many as nine outbreaks, 
>loose soils higher up where cattle are 
>defecating may be washed down in the soil by irrigation systems.
>
>Investigators are looking into flooding, 
>irrigation water, wild and domesticated animals 
>and farm workers as possible links between the cattle manure and spinach.
>
>The suggestion that the bacteria may have 
>traveled from cattle to vegetables has prompted 
>concerns that new limits on growers, such as buffer zones, will be imposed.
>
>The Salinas Valley-area is known as the "salad 
>bowl of the world" and farmers are now worried 
>that state and federal regulators could insist 
>on new rules restricting where they can grow produce.
>
>This they say would jeopardise the century old 
>history of the two leading agricultural 
>industries of farming and ranching in the region 
>and a buffer zone could place wide ares of 
>valuable land out of bounds for growing.
>
>Farmers who grow three-quarters of the nation's 
>spinach say it is not possible to grow the 
>vegetable outdoors and guarantee a 100% clean 
>and safe product, but the alternatives would 
>mean turning the Salinas Valley into a virtual 
>greenhouse and would make the produce much more expensive.
>
>Health officials argue that the Salinas Valley 
>area has seen nine outbreaks of the virulent E. 
>coli in the last decade which is an indication 
>that agricultural practices need improvement and 
>the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. 
>also says the issue of the proximity of cattle 
>to farm fields has always been a concern.
>
>This latest outbreak is the first time that 
>investigators have matched the bacterium from an 
>outbreak to an E. coli sample in the environment 
>close to where the contaminated spinach or lettuce was grown.
>
>Escherichia coli is as a rule a relatively 
>harmless bacteria found in the guts of animals.
>
>The E. coli O157:H7 strain was identified in 
>1982 and causes an estimated 73,000 cases of 
>infection and 60 deaths in the United States each year.
>
><http://www.news-medical.net/?id=20492>http://www.news-medical.net/?id=20492
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