Spinach outbreak culprit

Bacteria such as E.coli would be very stable to this environment.
If you have a billion cells/ml and only 1% survive, you'd still have a significant bacterial population.

Remember it's the exotoxin of the E. coli that causes the trouble and not really the bacteria.

I do remember that...

perplexing.

No, I don't think so.

miller wrote :
"Remember it's the exotoxin of the E. coli that causes the trouble and not really the bacteria. "

if the exotoxin is attached to the E. coli bacteria , would it get into the watertable ?
not being a scientist , i can only assume that the exotoxin gets into the watertable and from there into any water being drawn up .

i would think that any water not going through elaborate...WATER PURIFICATION... could be a carrier for all sorts of "nasties' , including exotoxin of the E. coli .
in some municipalities even water purification processes have sometimes not been sufficient to prevent disease outbreak .
remember the ...MILWAUKEE WATER CONTAMINATION... in 1993 ?
hbg

Yes, perplexing, re the usual inactivation temps of bacteria as fixing a difficulty.

My perhaps not right assumption is that this is surface stuff, whether from whatever animals' hooves or defecation to creek water.

Looking to me now to be best if it could be fixed by a bit of grading and drainage, perhaps wall building - however expensive.

It's decades ago that I read about spores and exotoxins. I'll wait for more info.

I saw a small news bleep about pending charges for the negligence and deaths...

That seems almost mean to me. We don't know enough yet.

You can't get blood from a turnip but apparently you can from spinach...

Looks like that article in the washington post that I linked higher up on the page is right - both wild pigs and grass fed cattle feces have tested to have the same precise E.coli variety as was implicated as culprit in the tainted spinach episode, with land that is part of the ranch being leased to a spinach farmer. (I'm thinking there should be barriers in such situations, as well as drainage diversion solutions.)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/23/BAGJDOQM1H8.DTL

Thanks Oss, for remembering this thread and finding it to post the updates on our suspicious and sometimes deadly food supply.

Pet food is now in a total disarray. How can this pet food contamination be so widespread? Scary... All the more reason why local growers are a good mechanism to encourage in the case of issues like this.

What I am a bit confused, isn't feces what organic food is grown with?

I realize it is grown with it and not actually on it when we eat it. Besides organic food usually looks homely compared to the modified stuff. I steer away from organics.

Is that paranoid?

Not at all.

Why eat something that's going to give you gastri problems for several weeks? :wink:

I think some organic food is probably/may be grown with a product of steer manure that has been let burn - I don't know if there are any bacteria left in it (they might be killed in the processing - I haven't looked that up); the contaminant in this situation which I'm taking to be originally from the wild pigs, and secondarily with the grass fed cattle, was carried on the feet of the pigs to the spinach field fresh, not "cooked", but fresh plopped. Or if not on the feet of the pigs, by the flow of water in the cattle ranch section downstream to the spinach fields.

(I don't steer (hah) away from organics, but I think some of the contaminated spinach here was organic as well as not.)

I go into the "natural" food grocers and the food is twice as expensive as the local supermarket. It does not taste any different and it is usually especially their produce all spotted with disease and under developed.

I once heard that under developed fruit and produce has to fight harder to survive so they produce more healthy healing enzymes than a piece of fruit that has no struggle growing.

For instance, grapes than have had to ward off a dry season by self producing chemistry that protects their skin, well this same chemistry also protects us when ingested.

So it is not always ripest and most plump fruit that is the best for you but it is the fruit that has faced some hardship that has the greatest amount of healing medical properties.

This may not be true in all cases but it is true with grapes. So actually the grapes that face the worst growing conditions (years) produce the greatest amount of enzymes that are beneficial to humans and our own protective chemistry.

I am not sure about produce and organics but I like produce to look good and not have blight and also to taste fresh. The larger supermarkets seem to be doing a better job of this than the organic health food stores.

(This is totally I am sure Nancy Pelosi's fault. She is pocketing the extra change so San Francisco can secede from the nation.)

This seems to indicate there are minimal bacteria, much less pathogens, left in composted manure.. the kind you compost yourself, assuming you follow directions, or buy in gross at large landscape supply places, or in packages at your local nursery...

http://cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/h-159.html - about half way down the page.

I should add to clarify that my guess is the cattle in that grassy pasture picked up the contaminant while eating the grass soiled by the wild pigs - I think I've read in a few places that the pathogenic e.coli is usually found in the big factory cornfeeding cattle lots, for whatever reason, more than with grassfed cattle. Since wild pigs are a problem in several areas, it makes me wonder if a) it's common they harbor the pathogen, and b) if this sort of situation can be happening elsewhere that they roam.

I really liked this article.... thanks Oss

My dad used to compost for our garden that I had to toss stones, weed and rototill when I was a boy and I never really learned the way composting was done and that article really spells it out in a concise manner.

It is really a circle of life to think that the waste from living organisms is exactly what the soil needs to maintain it's growing abilities. When that cycle is broken or reversed then life no longer can survive.

I think mad cow disease is a similar thing, the circle being abruptly broken and replaced with the wrong "feed"..

Annnnnnnnnnnd, in contrast to that last article, this one says it was traced -
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-spinach24mar24,0,508181.story?coll=la-home-local

As I mentioned I used to work in our family's garden with my dad as a youngster. I know that composting is very important in getting healthy vegetables and fruit. We used to compare how well the composting worked with our neighbors and the produce of their gardens. The old days when people used to grown their own spinach..

Also I remember only about 200 feet from our garden was our septic pipe that drained into the sea. The septic from about forty houses polluted the clams in the cove that we lived around. (I think it still is polluted to this day) So we could not dig the clams and eat them. So waste management a number of years ago was such a problem that the coastal regions were suffering dreadfully from raw sewage pouring directly into the sea... It seems hopeful that by using this sewage that the earth can be enriched, that it is exactly the waste from living organisms that the soil needs to retain it's growing qualities.

To the earth's soil, waste matter is good food... It only takes a certain amount preparation and it can be mixed right into the soil rather than dumped into the sea to pollute the marine life.

I know this is off the subject but I thought I would add it anyway.

I have become very suspicious of vegetables and fruit since the spinach scare.

I consider the cleaning and washing processes and what do you really have left after they have been lightly steamed, washed, dipped, drained and spun... It is unknown to me the "processing" that various fruits and vegetables go through that the end product is altered from it's natural state.

I was once told by a Greek woman that you are not supposed to wash mushrooms. Because the dirt on them is most of the nutrients that you get in eating them. What do you think of that?

Here's a thread on mushrooms -
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=65032&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=mushrooms&start=0

and another various views on cleaning them comes up -
http://able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17149&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0