Task force offers ideas on food safety

Suggestions come after E. coli outbreak earlier this year

A task force formed after this year’s E. coli outbreak linked to Yuma-grown romaine lettuce held its second meeting here last week, issuing recommendations based on what little they’ve been able to learn about the possible sources of contamination.

Scientists are still trying to ferret out exactly how the harmful bacteria was spread to romaine lettuce crops and ended up causing five deaths and 210 illnesses recorded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control between March 10 and June 6.

But about 85 growers, shippers, inspectors, foodsafety inspectors and others in the Arizona and California vegetable industries met at Pivot Point Conference Center Tuesday and Wednesday with U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials about what they know so far.

“By and large it was a very productive couple of days, and I think we have a number of recommendations which are going to be protective of public health, and I feel very good about where we are,” said Scott Horsfall, CEO of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Association and a lead organizer of the event.

Based on FDA investigators’ findings, the task force is recommending new “metrics,” or food-safety standards, be adopted by the LGMAs in California and Arizona, where most of the nation’s lettuce and other leafy vegetables are produced year-round.

Watching for certain lateseason weather conditions, keeping leafy crops further away from cattle or other animal feeding yards, and strengthening traceback methods once produce has left the field may prevent or shorten a future outbreak, according to the task force.

For instance, romaine lettuce in particular has a tendency to “experience a condition called ‘epidermal peel,’ which, under some

unusual conditions, may have allowed the pathogen to enter leaves,” according to the task force report.

Horfsall said guidelines that now caution growers to be aware of “unusual” weather without getting into specifics will get more detailed if the recommendations are adopted.

“If you look at this particular outbreak, we all knew that something had to have happened which was different from what had happened in the past, because all these other factors had been there in the past, and so that late frost. (The frost and) some other conditions may have contributed.

“High winds, then a light rain that increased the moisture,” added Teressa Lopez, administrator of the Arizona Leafy Greens Marketing Association.

The task force report also calls for further investigation of the area’s irrigation canal system, from which the FDA drew three samples in June that tested positive for E. coli bacteria genetically related to those which were tied to the outbreak.

The FDA at the time said the findings were not conclusive proof the canals had spread the bacteria, and Horfsall said the theory of weather-created crop damage is the hypothesis many are gravitating to, at this point.

“The big question is, why just romaine? If it was a general water issue, there a lot of crops grown, and a lot of crops grown at the same time. And yet this outbreak was almost exclusively tied to romaine,” he said.

John Galvez, quality assurance director for Salinas-based Markon Cooperative, appears in a video from a Yuma-area lettuce field in January advising the company’s food-service customers about the possibility of epidermal peel on romaine, after a frost event but before the outbreak started.

He told the Yuma Sun Friday, “It affects other lettuces as well, but romaine in particular, because it grows open and has more surface area exposed.”

What happens is the outer layer of skin on the romaine is blistered by the frost, and as the plant grows, the blister bursts, causing discoloration and sometimes exposing a thin layer of coating that can be peeled off, showing up in some viral videos of consumers claiming the substance was plastic.

Galvez said the peeling has always been believed to be a purely cosmetic issue, but he was not at the Yuma meeting and had not heard about the findings.

Another recommendation for updating the foodsafety metrics is increasing the required buffer zone between produce fields and “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs. Currently at 400 feet, the requirement could increase to 1200 feet “out of an abundance of caution,” Horfshall said.

Cattle yards, dairies and other farms with a high concentration of animals, are considered possible sources of E. coli, which is most commonly spread through contaminated mammal feces.

Other issues to be focused on by working groups at future meetings of the task force include the transition from Yuma in the winter to Salinas for the summer, since outbreaks tend to occur around the switch-off times of September and March, and communication with FDA officials during the process.

The task force will send the recommendations to both state LGMAs, which are industry-led groups of shippers and growers who have signed on to food safety-related practices which in some ways go beyond what the federal government requires. These will be fast-tracked on the Arizona side, since the start of the Yuma growing season is fast approaching.

Horfsall and Lopez said there hasn’t been any evidence shown of negligence on the part of Yuma growers in following the established procedures that have been set out by the LGMAs, which include testing water and soil before planting, during growth and just before they’re harvested.

Lopez said local farmers should have some new tools for preventing outbreaks once the task force recommendations are adopted, “but I do think that they’re definitely anxious as they go into next season.”

“About the market, about demand and how things are going to develop,” Horsfall added. “I personally think growers down here should be confident about everything they put into growing safe product. And something happened, and we’ve all worked hard to make improvements, but they have to be confident in their history of providing a safe product.”

Growers still yearn for the final answer on how the bacteria contaminated the romaine they produced and made it onto consumers’ plates, but advances in medical research have outpaced what’s available for tracing that lettuce back to the source.

John Boelts, a task force member from Yuma and vice president of the Arizona Farm Bureau Association, said, “We’re right here on the edge of science that’s a year or two old, like the pulse-field technology they’re using to give us this (genetic) fingerprint. That’s brand-new technology.”