Hollister
– Spinach is making a return to grocery shelves across the
nation and in local stores, but the leafy greens from San Benito,
Monterey and Santa Clara counties are still off limits while
investigations into the source of a recent E. coli outbreak
continue.
Hollister – Spinach is making a return to grocery shelves across the nation and in local stores, but the leafy greens from San Benito, Monterey and Santa Clara counties are still off limits while investigations into the source of a recent E. coli outbreak continue.
“We just put it on the shelves today,” Jim Gibson said Monday morning. Gibson is the owner of both Hollister Super Markets and Windmill Market in San Juan. “We’ll see what happens.”
The FDA announced Friday that all cases to date of E. coli had been traced back to Natural Selection Foods in San Juan Bautista, and that any spinach not grown in the Salinas Valley area could be considered safe.
This is good news for growers in southern California and on the East Coast, but regional growers and packers are still scrambling to develop new guidelines to win back the trust of state and federal agencies as well as consumers.
“I was at a meeting up in Salinas last week with a group of packers, shippers and growers,” San Benito County Farm Bureau President Paul Hain said. “They’re going to be submitting some plans to the state and feds very soon.”
Most of the guidelines discussed, Hain said, involved cleaning harvesting equipment more frequently and extensively.
“It’s going to be costly, of course, because that’s going to take more time and expense,” he said. “But at this point they’re just trying to get the train back on the tracks and assure people that they’re doing everything that can be done.”
On the bright side, if you have a hankering for a spinach salad, you can probably get it on the cheap.
“Spinach is cheap right now; we’re getting it at $8 a box,” Gibson said . The spinach being sold at Gibson’s operations is from Santa Maria, a suburban community in Santa Barbara County.
Still, the greatest threat to spinach growers this year remains the simple question of consumer confidence. If people don’t believe their vegetables are safe, they won’t be buying them, no matter what the FDA says.
“I think that if the consumer knows that the cause of the outbreak is still under investigation, there’s no reason to punish the entire industry because of one problem,” Hain said.
In California, where three-quarters of all domestically grown spinach is harvested, farmers could endure up to $74 million in losses. Last year’s spinach crop in the state was valued at $258.3 million, and each acre lost amounts to a roughly $3,500 hit for the farmer. Spinach has been one of San Benito County’s top 10 crops for the past two years, with production shooting up from 6,315 tons in 2004 to 13,330 tons in 2005, valued at more than $14.78 million altogether.
Some East Coast operations are considering putting stickers on spinach, identifying its origins in the hopes that consumers will be more receptive to their produce.
“If they’re trying to ensure people that they’re not affected (by the outbreak) and I’m sure that’s good marketing,” Hain said. “But if that in some way implies that anything grown out of this area is suspect, that’s not good.”
In the meantime, the FDA is urging consumers to handle their food properly once they bring it home to reduce the chance of illness, which includes refrigerating and washing produce properly as well as avoiding cross contamination.
Associated Press writer Juliana Barbasa contributed to this report.
Danielle Smith covers education for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or
ds****@fr***********.com
