09.24.06

E. coli Myths

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:28 pm by trueepicure

I posted a comment on the Accidental Hedonist’s blog a couple of days ago, in response to one of the posts Kate wrote about the current Spinach/E. coli scare. In addition to her other posts on the Spinach Debacle (my term), this one is a good round up of what is going on. My comment to Kate’s post was essentially to point out that if we were sourcing things like spinach locally, there wouldn’t be so much confusion about what farm/processing plant the contaminated plants came from.

But that got me thinking… so I started looking for news articles about the current spinach fiasco. I found a ton of different articles about how so many stores have been pulling spinach – ALL forms of spinach — off the shelves, even if it was in something else that was canned, and you’d probably die from the preservatives long before you’d die of E. coli.

Of course, everyone is talking about the Spinach Debacle. EVERYbody. Google “spinach e coli” and you’ll be awash in articles. It seems like everyone is saying the same things: we don’t know where the contamination started, a whole bunch of people got sick (I think we’re up to about 150), one person dead, kidney failure, etc. I don’t mean to trivialize the situation, it is very serious, but it’s all just all a bit much. No one really knows anything, but we’re being bombarded with news. And yet…. So I started with CNN.com’s article from the Associated Press.

According to the AP:

“The FDA’s top food expert stressed the importance of stopping the bacterium at its source, since rinsing spinach won’t eliminate the risk. “If you wash it, it is not going to get rid of it,” said Robert Brackett, director of the agency’s Center for Food Safety and Nutrition.”

Okay, I’m on board with that. You could also spread the bacteria just by touching it and then touching your counter. Bad news. The article goes on to say:

“E. coli lives in the intestines of cattle and other animals and typically is spread through contamination by fecal material. Brackett said the use of manure as a fertilizer for produce typically consumed raw, such as spinach, is not in keeping with good agricultural practices. “It is something we don’t want to see,” he told a food policy conference…”

Wait a minute, isn’t cow manure a good fertilizer? Hasn’t this been what we’ve done for years? Oh yeah, we feed cows ground up cow bones and corn. Not so good. The ground up bones is pretty obvious. It’s not a good idea to feed cows to themselves – high potential for transmitted diseases. That’s a no brainer (no pun intended).

I mentioned Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma a couple of posts ago. I’m going to mention it again now, because the Spinach Debacle made me think of something I read in the book. Cows don’t eat corn, they are specifically designed to eat GRASS! But it’s all vegetable matter, you say? Nope, it’s not. Some species have developed to specifically eat certain kinds of food, and some are so specialized, that they can only survive on one food. Koala bears (http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-koala.html), for example, only eat Eucalyptus leaves, which are poisonous to most other animals. Koalas have developed to possess a special bacteria living in their stomachs that break down the oils in Eucalyptus that are toxic to other animals. They don’t even drink much water because they get a fair amount of water from the leaves. Cows are similar.

Cows have developed to be able to digest grasses and turn those grasses into energy. Their stomachs, all four of them, are designed to process vegetation. Eating grass makes cows and their stomachs happy. Unfortunately, many cows are subjected to eating corn, which their bodies aren’t designed to digest. They can eat it, and they do a very efficient job of turning the corn into protein, but digesting corn throws the ph of their digestive system out of wack, meaning that the E. coli bacteria that would normally be killed in the cow’s digestive system is potentially still living in their digestive system. E. coli in the cow’s system gets excreted in their manure, which is then used as fertilizer. I wouldn’t have thought that the E. coli could survive sitting around that long, but apparently it does.

The Detroit Free Press says that there is no evidence of tampering in the Spinach Debacle. Tampering? Well, that depends on what you call tampering. Messing with the food chain? I’d say that could be considered tampering. While it’s not actually opening up the spinach bags and injecting toxins, I’d say it was tampering on a larger scale.

I guess it’s true what they say: we reap what we’ve sown.

For more information:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Sept98/acid.relief.hrs.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/281/5383/1666

Google: e coli in cows; e coli spinach

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