Marijuana has a bad public image in the US, no question there; but is spinach just as bad now? 

In this article, all about the double standard of pot smoking, comes a resurfacing of the comparison of pot and spinach (not something I’d want to see if I was in the spinach business, well maybe, depends who your target market is I guess).  Even fark.com has a link to the story, with the headline More people died last year from eating spinach than from smoking pot

This is another reference to spinach being worse than pot, following up on what Willie Nelson reportedly said last year after being charged with pot possession:

"It’s a good thing I had a bag of Marijuana instead of a bag of spinach. I’d be dead by now."

This example is a reminder of what happens when you make people sick and don’t have verification of all the things you are doing to reduce risk.  An do a good job talking about all of your measures that are in place. People manage outbreaks all the time, fix problems that lead to them and get on with business.

The discussions that occur on the internet on outbreaks (especially the spinach and peanut butter outbreaks) provide a template for how rapidly interested consumers engaged in discussions around food safety. It used to be at the dinner table that these discussions happened, and damage was limited because it was small pockets of discussion.  Now we have many people globally instantly discussing food safety issues and stories get big. Fast.

If I was involved of the risk management or communications at a spinach or leafy green company (or any company that makes a food product that might be linked to an outbreak) I’d have a plan together on how to manage these types of discussions, to get my messages out in places like youtube , myspace, facebook, wikipedia and the blogs (and use the comment fields to discuss and respond) and put a face on who is managing things.  Be rapid, relevant, reliable and repeat your messages. I’d give my outbreak a myspace page, put my press conferences on youtube and generate a place for discussion where I could respond. And I’d be ready to do it now, not when the outbreak hits.

As demonstrated by the legs of this story, it’s too late now.