SACRAMENTO BEE

October 12, 2006

Hearing grills farm enforcers

Officials called '0 for 5' at forum on E. coli tied to spinach.

By Dorsey Griffith - Bee Medical Writer

Charging that California officials have resorted to begging growers to take preventive measures against E. coli contamination of produce, Sen. Dean Florez on Wednesday grilled health officials and industry representatives about whether more regulatory teeth are needed to make the lettuce and spinach supply chain safer.

The three-hour hearing on the recent E. coli outbreak traced to Salinas Valley-grown spinach drew farmers, processors and water quality experts to the Capitol.

Florez, D-Shafter, peppered state health officials with questions about their ability to regulate the lettuce and spinach growing and processing industries.

Specifically, he cited previous plans devised to address the problems. And he quoted from letters to industry representatives from both federal and state health officials expressing concern about recurring E. coli outbreaks and encouraging the industries to follow existing agricultural guidelines.

One letter dated Jan. 25, 2006, from state Public Health Officer Mark Horton to Tom Nassif, president of the Western Growers Association, "strongly urged" Nassif "to take immediate steps" already outlined by the Food and Drug Administration nearly a year earlier.

Horton also notified Nassif that his staff would conduct assessments of existing regulations that cover manure composting, leaky septic tanks, farmworker access to portable toilets and hand-washing facilities and determine whether fields known to flood frequently should be used to grow ready-to-eat products such as lettuce.

When asked the status of those assessments, Kevin Reilly, a deputy director at the Department of Health Services, said none had been completed and emphasized that state officials continue working with industry to address all of the issues.

"They went 0 for 5," Florez said later. "At the end of the day none of it was complete or done. That doesn't give us any assurance that anyone truly has the eye on the ball."

Florez suggested that the state has a poor track record when it comes to completion of outbreak investigations, citing three E. coli incidents in 2002 and 2003 that were traced back to the Chinn Ranch in Salinas.

Reilly told Florez that the Chinn Ranch investigation was not yet complete. And Jeff Farrar, food safety section chief for the DHS, conceded that he didn't know whether Chinn Ranch has resumed growing crops in its fields since the outbreaks.

"We have to be able to close the shop on these folks," Florez said. "People want to know that food from the farm to their fork is safe. Anything less than that is not acceptable."

Probed about the yet-unnamed fields implicated in the current spinach outbreak, Reilly said the growers have been warned that anything produced there will be subject to an embargo by the state while the investigation continues.

Grower groups that testified expressed regret about the recent illnesses, and pledged redoubled efforts to prevent future outbreaks, including frequent testing of water, soil and produce. They also called for more research into possible sources of the problems rather than new regulations.

"We have hundreds, possibly thousands of points of contamination in our production chain, many of which we don't understand," said Dave Puglia, vice president of the Western Growers Association. "We need to see the results of the investigation. That is going to point the way."

Trevor Suslow, an extension specialist at the University of California, Davis, who works closely with the produce industry, said the emphasis on more research and increased testing is misplaced. Instead, he said, the industry should focus on known sources of contamination and existing means to prevent them.

"The issue comes down to implementation of good agricultural practices," Suslow said. "I don't think you could honestly say there is a 100 percent compliance in industry."

Absent from the hearing were representatives of the FDA, the federal agency working with state health officials investigating the possible cause of the E. coli outbreak in raw spinach, which sickened 199 people across the country and killed three.

Instead, the FDA submitted a written statement outlining its work responding to the spinach outbreak.

Florez said he plans to introduce comprehensive legislation to develop a statewide food safety plan in January.