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Food Safety
Misdirected efforts to lower food safety
risks are discouraging conservation practices proven to safeguard wildlife
habitat as well as the nation’s food supply.
On May 2, 2008, “Wildlife in Middle
of War on E. Coli” by Jane Zhang appeared in the Wall Street Journal,
bringing national attention to the environmental costs of current food
safety trends. Click here to read an excerpt from the
article.
Another article, “Fields
of Overkill”, by Li Miao Lovett appeared in High Country News
this May, narrating how the cause of conservation and farmers in the Salinas
Valley are both being scorched by food safety concerns. Click
here to read more.
Current research and available science articulate the
false nature of the conflict between food safety and environmental stewardship.
Eliminating wildlife, which studies have shown do not pose a significant
risk to food safety, and removing wildlife habitat that filters pathogens
exacerbates the problem of E.coli 0157 entering the food supply.Click
here for a summary of WFA's policy paper or download
"Food
Safety Requires a Healthy Environment: Policy Recommendations for E.coli
0157".
WFA also produced an addendum to the policy paper, which
includes photos of habitat destruction. Click
here to view "Environmental Destruction in the Salinas Valley: 'Food
Safety' Requirements to Remove Habitat Make Leafy Greens Less Safe."
Download Photos of Habitat
Destruction
More information:
Growers' survey
showing environmental destruction caused by food safety requirements along
California's Central Coast conducted by Monterey Resource Conservation
District.
Crop
Notes from Monterey County's Cooperative Extension discussing the
unlikelihood of rodents as vectors of E. coli O157:H7 and other
pathogenic strains.
Food Safety Policy
Guide from Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) outlining
the "history, politics, and perils of the current food safety controversy."
E. coli
Analysis Chart from CAFF showing the percentage
of outbreaks originating in California that have been traced to processed
leafy greens.
From "Wildlife in Middle of War on E. coli" by Jane
Zhang, Wall Street Journal:
“Farmers around California's "Salad Bowl"
have mounted an assault against wildlife to appease buyers who worry about
E. coli in their leafy greens.
About one-third of the farmers surveyed in the region have cleared wide
swaths of land surrounding their fields, leaving felled trees scattered
along the Salinas River. Most used poisons, traps or fences to keep out
frogs, squirrels and other wildlife last year, according to a Monterey
County Resource Conservation District survey. Some farmers let ponds and
irrigation reservoirs -- potentially prime wildlife habitat -- go dry.
Caught in the middle is wildlife whose complicity in the transmission
of E. coli is unconfirmed. And farmers. While fresh-produce farmers are
forced to absorb skyrocketing food-safety costs, not all of the measures
are justified by science.
Despite his concerns about harming the environment, Bob Martin, general
manager of Rio Farms in King City, says he cleared vegetation and trapped
and poisoned mice and squirrels on the 6,000-acre farmland that mainly
produces leafy greens. To keep birds out of his property, he has tried
fences, propane-powered blast cannons, and hawk-like kites tied to poles.
They work, but not for long. "It's all smoke and mirrors," he
says, noting birds get used to the tricks.
To keep his fields as clean as possible, Mr. Martin says he spent more
than $500,000 in 2007 on food-safety steps, including a full-time food-safety
overseer. He is chagrined much of the extra costs have been imposed without
scientific proof of their necessity.
"We are definitely between a rock and a hard spot," says Mr.
Martin, who is participating in a study of the risks of E. coli from deer.
"I understand the necessity of adhering to a basic set of standards."
But he thinks many measures are "window dressing."
Some farmers said buyers have rejected acres of lettuce and other leafy
greens after inspectors saw "potential frog habitat" or tadpoles
in a nearby creek.
Some smaller farmers opt out. Dale Coke, owner of a 250-acre farm in San
Juan Bautista, said he lost $50,000 to $60,000 in sales to Canadian buyers
because he isn't participating in a California initiative that set standards
for leafy-green growers. Had he signed up, he says, he would have to apply
the rules to all of his crops, even though 70% aren't leafy greens.
Although Mr. Coke spends more than $10,000 a year on food safety, he sells
to wholesalers who don't require him to follow the "draconian measures"
imposed by processors, he says.”
Consumers need to communicate that "they will not tolerate environmental
destruction for the production of their leafy greens," says Jo Ann
Baumgartner, director of the Wild Farm Alliance. "These current practices
in the Salinas Valley are bad for human health and bad for wildlife."
From "Fields of overkill" by Li Mao Lovett, High Country
News:
“In California's verdant Salinas Valley, the tangles of trees and
shrubs that once bordered the fields of leafy greens are disappearing.
Chain-link fences now barricade the Salinas River as it flows through
the nation's salad bowl. In early April, a small lake that once sheltered
migratory birds and insects beneficial to farmers had been reduced to
a bulldozed pit; by the end of the month, it had disappeared completely.
Like the vanishing trees and hedgerows, the pond was another victim of
food-safety measures gone awry.
After an E. coli outbreak in 2006 was traced to tainted spinach, the leafy
greens industry and big corporate buyers like McDonald's and Wal-Mart
responded with an array of tough new standards for growing spinach and
lettuce. Packaged produce has been the culprit in the majority of outbreaks
linked to leafy greens; those who fell sick or died in the 2006 outbreak
had eaten bagged spinach from a single processing plant in California
owned by Natural Selection Foods. Still, native vegetation and waterways
that provide habitat for deer, birds and other wildlife were suddenly
seen as health threats by those high up on the corporate food chain.
Pushed by inspectors and buyers, leafy greens growers on California's
Central Coast are sterilizing their fields, ripping out wildlife habitat
and putting up fences. Often, the farmers' contracts and livelihoods are
at stake. "Growers have been told to cut down trees on family farms
that have been around for 50 years," says Kirk Schmidt, executive
director of Central Coast Water Quality Preservation. And it's not just
farmers and wildlife that are losing out - the excessive measures are
changing farms in ways that could actually make our food supply less safe.
"Buyers are taking advantage of food safety to get a competitive
edge," says Joseph McIntyre, facilitator of the California Roundtable
on Agriculture and the Environment. "They're putting pressure on
growers toward practices that may not have food safety benefits, as well
as (cause) unintended consequences."
Click
here to read the entire piece.
More on WFA's policy paper Food
Safety Requires a Healthy Environment: Policy Recommendations for E.coli
0157:
WFA works in a region directly affected by this issue, and we are seeing
and hearing first hand reports of how compliance with unreasonable food
safety requirements is resulting in significant environmental degradation.
Our mission of promoting agriculture that protects and restores wild nature
strikes at the heart of this matter. Without changes to the direction
food safety programs, stewardship practices supported by USDA and others
that protect the environment would be jeopardized nationwide.
In the paper, a set of recommendations is made for all current and future
government-sanctioned food safety programs. Some are suggested changes
to Good Agricultural Practice metrics, and others are changes to the scope
of what food safety programs cover. Additionally, suggestions address
wider-reaching core problems that when dealt with concurrently, yield
a more comprehensive plan for the safe production of food.
Major recommendations include: a) the unfounded targeting of wildlife
is stopped; b) buffers between crops and grazing lands are vegetated instead
of left bare, and no buffer is required between crops and habitat; c)
a ceiling is placed on all government authorized food safety programs
to curtail the use of environmentally destructive super metrics; and d)
food safety auditors are certified through programs teaching agricultural
natural resource protections that reduce the incidence of harmful pathogens
on the landscape.
Click here to download
the pdf.
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