Spinach contamination linked to cattle feces

The finding did not answer how the spinach was contaminated with the virulent strain of E. coli that has killed three and sickened nearly 200 people nationwide.

Still, “finding a close or identical strain is sufficiently rare that it speaks volumes about the likely source,” said University of California, Davis, plant pathologist Trevor Suslow, who has studied pathogens in spinach and lettuce in the Salinas Valley.

The breakthrough underscored a key concern of health officials: the close proximity of cattle, whose feces can carry the dangerous bacteria, to farms growing ready-to-eat greens.

“We do not have a smoking `cow’ at this point,” said Kevin Reilly, deputy director for prevention services at the California Department of Health Services. But, he said, at the farm neighboring the cattle pasture where the strain was isolated, “the fields are surrounded, frankly, by pastures where livestock are kept.” The spinach farm’s operator leases its land from the cattle ranch owner, and the two operations are separated by a paved road and fences.

The fecal samples that matched the E. coli strain in the outbreak were found in a pasture about half a mile to a mile away from the spinach field.

The closeness between cattle and leafy green operations in the Salinas Valley area is “not uncommon,” Reilly said.

Not all of the four farms suspected in the outbreak have both spinach and livestock operations, Reilly said. Local agricultural officials say most cattle ranching is done in the foothills, while leafy greens are largely grown in the fertile valley bottom.

“The proximity ... has always been an issue of concern,” said Robert Brackett, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s food safety center. Officials, farmers and scientists said Thursday’s announcement raises a question: Should minimum distances be set between fields that grow leafy greens and cattle pastures?

“If you have cattle in a pasture that’s adjoining where you’re growing lettuce or spinach crops, you have a problem,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest.

“You have to create zones around the field to make sure the cattle manure can’t get into the farm field,” she said. “To narrow the solution to one field or one group of cattle would be missing the more systemic problem that may exist in the Salinas Valley.” Even before the announcement, some farmers and cattlemen have informally expressed concerns about the possibility of having to create buffer zones between fields and pasture land.

“You’re talking about huge amounts of private property,” said Bob Perkins, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau.

Matthew Byrne, the California Cattlemen’s Association’s executive vice president, said cattle ranchers have already been putting practices in place over the past decade to prevent runoff and water contamination, such as researching the slope of land, fencing off creek sides and planting buffer zones.The state Department of Food and Agriculture has no regulations regarding the distance between cattle and fresh produce operations, said spokesman Steve Lyle. But having a field of spinach neighboring a cattle field does violate so-called Good Agricultural Practices, a voluntary set of national guidelines on food safety practices, said Alejandro Castillo, an associate professor of food microbiology at Texas A&M University.

Agricultural experts say that spinach and lettuce growers should be examining their fields for any visible feces, and destroying those crops if they find it.

“Something tells me that somebody didn’t do their job,” Castillo said.

Brackett, of the FDA, said instituting a minimum distance between cattle and farms “is something we will take into consideration as we go forward.”

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