The
entire produce industry has joined together to put public health first
and to maintain public trust since the spinach crisis began in mid-September.
The past several weeks have been trying times for all who bring fresh
spinach from the field to consumers.
Summary of Sequence of Events
This brief sequence of events is provided to help clear the way for
consumers to once again feel confident that the spinach they consume
is safe. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared all spinach,
other than product originally recalled by its supplier.
It is quite unfortunate that something went wrong in one processing
plant on a single day, August 15, 2006, when a single lot of spinach
was shipped which sickened 204 people in 26 states and one Canadian
province, and left three people dead. In mid-September, U.S. Food and
Drug Administration officials issued a sweeping recommendation against
eating fresh spinach, after linking it with the outbreak. The industry
issued a recall on September 15, 2006. Days later, the FDA narrowed
the source of the problem to California, and by the end of the month,
lifted warnings against eating spinach.
Keep in mind that shipments before and after the lot which was shipped
by that one plant on August 15, 2006, were consumed without any problems.
Something went wrong on that one day, in that processing plant. Spinach
is safe to consume. The industry has rose to provide additional safeguards
to help insure that the product remains safe.
Good Agricultural Practices
Spinach is healthy, safe to consume and very important to Texas. Over
20,000 stories were written about the spinach outbreak. There is no
doubt that this incident will cause fundamental food processing procedures
to change. The industry is concentrating on how to prevent the next
one.
The Wintergarden Spinach Producers Board has prepared a detailed document
outlining Good Agricultural Practices which will be implemented to insure
minimizing pathogen contamination in fresh market spinach production.
The seven page document includes instructions for worker hygiene, sanitary
production practices, sanitary harvest
procedures, sanitary post harvest/packing shed practices and sanitary
procedures to transport product to the market, as well as a check lists
of critical hazard control points.
Production Adjustments
While the problem was created that one day in California, spinach growers
outside of the Salinas Valley were not immune to the fallout after the
outbreak. Producers and shippers have lost product and money and hope
that the crisis will subside by the time winter crops are ready for
harvest.
Brian Mizokami, owner and president of Uvalde, Texas-based Pentagon
Produce Inc., was quoted in the October 23, 2006 issue of The Packer
that he had 25 loads of spinach from his Colorado fields destined for
a repacker in Pennsylvania when the ban was announced. The repacker
shut down the day of the Food and Drug Administration’s alert
in mid-September. According to the article in The Packer, Brian said,
“It was over 682,000 pounds of spinach, worth about $250,000.”
Brian is quoted as saying, “We’re in flux, and we’ll
just have to see how it plays out.” “We’re planting
about 20% less acreage right now. We’ll space planting every five
days until about Thanksgiving. Then we’ll start again for another
few weeks in December.”
Meanwhile, retail outlets have restocked spinach since early October.
Produce managers indicate that while the volume of sales is not as high
as the pre-crisis’s volume, sales are actually gradually gaining
momentum as consumers regain confidence in the product.
Spinach Production
Spinach production is very important to Texas and especially the Southwest
Wintergarden region of Texas where almost 90 percent of the spinach
produced in Texas is produced. While California now dominates spinach
production, producing about 71 percent of the 890 million pounds of
spinach produced in the U.S. in 2004, Texas produced about nine percent
with a farm gate value of about $12.6 million and an industrial economic
impact of about $44.1 million to communities supporting the industry
in Texas.
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