Spinach outbreak culprit

E.coli entered the irrigation system via a flood from the sewage system.

Did you see a news blip on that?

Can you please post a link if so?

I was just looking for that and couldn't find a link on it. A recent SF Chronicle article describes the investigation process.

Spinach contamination investigation

Those irrigation systems should and probably do have backflow preventers - I think the farms have been checked before. But who knows...

It would be good if they can figure out the exact cause of contamination in this case.

It was on the evening TV news.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/18/health/main2016329.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_2016329

That just said it was a possible source.

The Chronicle's detailed story is from this morning.

Do you remember the tylenol scare of several years ago? Does the spinach affair sound like the tylenol scare?

I remember it.

I am thinking not... for the time being.

I cringe at the photos of all the probably good spinach being thrown away, but agreeing with erring on the side of caution. (Am speaking of a photo in the Chicago Tribune about a guy there hurling away a lot of spinach from Colorado...)

I can see a field dysfunction re irrigation, but there are irrigation solutions for that - but maybe they are using incorrect backflow preventers somewhere. Some of them have to be set a foot above the highest sprinkler head, for example. So, if they are not, a vacuum in the system can pull in bad stuff.

I'm a liitle odd in that I've worked as a research/clinical tech with a bacti major, and then studied and was licensed in landsc. architecture, thus learning about backflow prevention. But hey, that was then, and I don't remember all the details I learned to pass the boards. Agricultural irrigation was never my forte.

If it's an in-building thing, it would seem they could detect it as coming from one packaging place.

Hard for me to believe a cow in one field.. or even a human with the pathogenic E. coli in one field..

but I've been reading more, that toxin the path E.c. puts out is active in small amounts.

Which brings up the question, do farm workers need to be tested? And all the implications of that.

Surely they need good bathroom facilities, which I am personally doubtful about.

I've worked with E.coli throughout most of my career and I've never considered it to be pathogenic, at least relative to some of the really pathogenic bacteria.

The strain that infected the spinach was a highly toxic strain of unknown biological source be it human or animal.

I agree, thus my squawking on BBB's thread, E. coli is a part of normal flora. This strain puts out a toxin, as I gather do a few other E.c. types. (I don't remember the word, strains, whatever.) Newspapers railing about E.coli as a generalization annoy me. Best they test their own poo.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14891968/

I don't argue with anything in that link, RexRed.

By and large, produce is not touched by fecal material from a person or an animal with toxic E. coli. The processing, if some leaves have been infected, seems geared to distribute the toxin widely.

Surely this needs reconsideration.

I'm still hoping this is to be found with a particular source, though I'm somewhat worried about the recent plowing under I've read about. Reasonable for farms to do, but will that remove clues?

I read, sometime in my recent reading, that the bacteria could be killed with fifteen seconds cooking at x heat --- which is how I usually eat spinach.

Well, that's another subject - maybe they could be, but what about the toxin -

Miller, do you know about that?
or PatioDog?
or anyone else?

E. coli can be easily killed by exposure to elevated temperature either boiling or autoclaving.

As far as the toxin, the heat sensitivity will be determined by the chemical structure of the toxin.

The toxin from E.coli is heat stable but I think the heat stability is affected by pH.

As far as food poisoning, I always thought Salmonella was far worse than E. coli. But as far as food infection is concerned, that may be a different matter.

Well, the hemolytic aspects are daunting.

I knew heat gets the bacti, but not about that re pH, or the toxin..

Well, hell, I don't know much. Am plenty curious, and worry about inappropriate fear mongering at exactly the same time I worry in the opposite way - not re outsider instigation, just that without serious purview we might miss how this happened.

Let's say I still think it could be one cow (unlikely) or one person (more likely), whose onfield defecation resulted by virtue of the process in a wide dissemination of the toxin.
I don't know how you test against that without checking stool specimens of the workers...

I wonder about how high the level of human drinking standard that the irrigation water supply is at in California? Has that even been publicly tested? Is the irrigation water purified? Does the FDA test and monitor these standards?

That's all answered, RexRed, but not by me, not a data compiler.

As far as I know, CA is way ahead of a lot of other places on irrigation technology, including backflow prevention requirements.

I just moved from CA to New Mexico. CA is easily twenty years ahead regarding xeriscape practice, in my experience. Though that is not exactly related, it's an indicator of the interest level in all these matters.

I did irrigation and planting design for tract housing in LA, when I was starting in the profession. Just ask me what I think about the builder of my townhouse here in New Mexico..

Irrigation water should have the same standard as water, normally encountered in swimming areas.
As you may recall, beaches are frequently closed in the Summer, when the coliform bacterial count exceeds certain, specific set standards.