Judith Redmond, co-owner of Full Belly Farm in Yolo County, and president of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, perpetuated a few leafy green myths in the Sacramento Bee yesterday.

Redmond writes that,

"Much of California-grown "leafy greens," including spinach and lettuce, now go to the bagged salad mix market. This transformation from fresh to processed salads has created lucrative new and distant markets, but also has set the stage for heightened food safety concerns that do not exist with traditionally grown salad."

Dangerous microorganisms do not discriminate between lettuce and spinach bound for processing into a bag or shipped as is. Yes, processing can amplify problems once they exist, but control of microorganisms begins on the farm. Period.

Redmond says,

"Data provided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and analyzed by the Community Alliance with Family Farmers show that since 1999, 98.5 percent of E. coli illnesses from leafy greens in California have been traced to processed, bagged salad."

I’d like to see how they came up with those numbers; publish it in a peer-reviewed journal. It’s telling that whoever concocted this data ignored outbreaks before 1999 when bagged leafy greens weren’t as widely available. Check out our table at: http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/2007/09/articles/food-safety-communication/listeria-found-in-lettuce-at-central-florida-market/index.html

The listeria on fresh lettuce reported in Orlando Saturday was not bagged.

Redmond says,

"Our soil is full of life that wards off diseases and human pathogens."

I’ve heard this before, how organic soils are rich with microbial life that out-compete the bad bugs like E. coli O157:H7. I have seen no data to support this assertion.

Redmond says,

"… we must understand what it is about modern agricultural practices that has resulted in increasing problems with this super-bug, and what new interventions are needed to reduce its levels on our food and in the agricultural environment. This is likely to involve a hard look at industrialized cattle operations …."

And grass-fed cow-calf operations like the one linked to the 2006 spinach outbreak.