A year after an E. coli outbreak traced to San Benito County
spinach cost local growers up to $6 million in lost revenue, the
industry is fighting hard to win back consumer confidence.
Hollister – A year after an E. coli outbreak traced to San Benito County spinach cost local growers up to $6 million in lost revenue, the industry is fighting hard to win back consumer confidence.
The E. coli outbreak – announced Sept. 14, 2006 – eventually sickened more than 200 people and killed three nationwide. It was traced to spinach processed at San Juan Bautista-based Natural Selection Foods. Since then, consumer demand for fresh spinach has waned.
Many shoppers heading into Nob Hill on Tuesday night said they had been eating spinach since shortly after the recall. Pebble Beach resident Desmond Carreras said he couldn’t wait for spinach to get back on the self.
“It’s an unfortunate event, but that doesn’t mean I am going to stop buying things from China, either,” Carreras said of other product recalls.
Hollister resident Kitina Martin said her family stopped eating spinach for just a short time after the outbreak.
“We just make sure we wash it well before we eat it,” Martin said.
Jim Gibson, who owns Hollister Super on Third Street, Su Supermercado on Fourth Street and Windmill Market in San Juan Bautista, said spinach sales at his grocery stores are still about half of what they were before the outbreak.
“It really hasn’t recovered at all,” Gibson said of spinach sales.
Before the outbreak, the stores combined to sell 10 cases of spinach, which contain 24 bunches each, Gibson said. A year later, Gibson’s stores sell an average of four cases per day, he said.
Some companies, however, are reporting spinach sales that are near pre-outbreak levels.
Samantha Cabaluna, a spokeswoman for Natural Selection Foods, said the company’s spinach sales are 90 percent of what they were before the recall.
Consumer advocate groups have argued the government should regulate the leafy green industry to prevent future food-borne illnesses.
Elisa Odabashian, director of the west coast office of the Consumers Union, said lacking confidence in the safety of fresh spinach is evident in the industry’s losses. Spinach crop losses since the outbreak have been estimated between $50 million and $100 million.
The Consumers Union has been highly critical of the industry’s California Leafy Green Marketing Agreement – a program designed to improve food safety through mandatory California Department of Food and Agriculture inspections and testing of those who sign up.
Instead, the state’s health department should be regulating the leafy green industry, Odabashian said. Sen. Dean Florez, D-Merced, introduced a trio of bills this year that would give the California Department of Public Health the authority to inspect and regulate the industry. Those bills were shelved in the Assembly Agriculture Committee.
Odabashian said there have been 22 E. coli outbreaks linked to leafy greens in the past 10 years.
Ultimately, consumer confidence will be measured in spinach sales, Odabashian said.
“The consumer dollar – that is going to be the true test of whether they succeed,” Odabashian said of the industry’s efforts to restore confidence.
Surveys conducted during the outbreak’s aftermath showed consumer confidence in fresh spinach had dropped dramatically.
In February, Rutgers University released a survey showing that almost half of Americans ate spinach before the outbreak. In November, 44 percent of those who ate spinach before the outbreak had eaten spinach after the recall ended, according to the survey.
In May, the Virginia-based Food Marketing Institute released nationwide survey showing that consumer confidence in safety of their groceries had dropped from 82 percent in January 2006 to 66 percent in January 2007.
The survey also showed that 38 percent of Americans had stopped buying certain products. Of the people who stopped, 71 percent said they were no longer buying spinach. Lettuce accounted for 16 percent and bagged salad accounted for 9 percent of those who stopped buying products, according to the survey.
In 2006, FMI reported that 9 percent of Americans had stopped buying certain foods that they had a year before.
Bill Greer, director of communications for the FMI, said the results reflected the media attention at the time of the E. coli outbreak.
“The results were clearly affected by that,” Greer said.
After the survey, salmonella-tainted peanut butter and high concentrations of lead found in toys manufactured in China caused recalls for both of those products, Greer said.
