Safety rules sought for growers
An agricultural trade group is proposing mandatory food safety standards for California lettuce and spinach producers, in hopes that such a system will help restore public confidence after a deadly E. coli outbreak this summer.
The proposal Monday by Irvine-based Western Growers Assn., which represents the fresh produce industry in California and Arizona, seeks to enhance existing safety precautions for leafy greens and would cover such issues as water and soil testing, worker sanitation and “everything that is done in the field before [produce] gets to the plant,” the group’s president, Thomas Nassif, said.
The effort comes in response to the nationwide warnings against eating fresh spinach after bags were found to be contaminated with deadly bacteria, sickening more than 200 people and killing three. Investigators eventually linked the fatal strain of E. coli to wild pigs that might have spread the bacteria by trampling fences surrounding a Salinas Valley spinach field.
The outbreak was the ninth linked to California vegetables in the last decade.
Under the new proposal, the California Department of Food and Agriculture would enforce the guidelines and give compliant growers a clean bill of health. The state also would have the authority to sanction growers who don’t follow food safety procedures by enjoining them from shipping or selling their crops, assessing fines or seeking criminal penalties.
“It is not normal for a business to say, ‘Please regulate us and enforce it if we don’t do the right things,’ ” Nassif said. “But that, we believe, is essential to restore public confidence.”
Western Growers hopes to have a standard agreement among produce buyers, transporters and processors worked out by January, and the standards with which growers would have to comply by March, he added.
Farmers, processors and retailers would be assessed a fee to pay for the inspections, said Nassif and state agriculture department spokeswoman Nancy Lungren.
The effort first would apply only to California’s lettuce and spinach industry, Nassif said. But the group, which also is working with federal officials on a similar set of food safety standards, wants the state proposal to eventually cover farmers and processors in other states to have a uniform standard nationwide, he said.
