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Sept 20 , 2006

Clean Produce - Thaddeus

Sept 20 , 2006

The E. coli 157 outbreak in the organic washed spinach last week has really opened all of our eyes. This incident is an example that illustrates the difference in scale of production agriculture. The outbreak came from the largest packer and shipper of organic washed spinach and the reason the outbreak was of such a large magnitude was because of the large scale of the operation.

A very large production agriculture operation generally has one large facility that receives produce from many different farms and processes it all together. This is done because large facilities are very expensive and the best way to make a facility economically viable is to have it process huge volumes of produce. The actual growing of the product is contracted out to many different farms - who farm with their own individual style. All of these farms grow the product and send it to the packinghouse that receive the product, washes it, packages it into one label and sells it to wholesalers and retail chains.

The benefits of this operation are that the farmers do not need to deal with any of the washing, packing or selling of the product. This makes the farmer's job easier and relives them of the cost and responsibility of packing and selling the product. The packer does not need to deal with growing any of the product, but can focus on washing, packing and selling huge volumes, which make it more cost effective and allows the company to invest in facilities that no farmer could afford (unless of course they are a huge farm).

The disadvantages of this operation are what we saw last week. I don't know what happened but the following is a very good possibility based on what I do know about the industry. One grower had a batch of spinach that was contaminated with the e. coli 157 bacteria for some reason (livestock manure is a very common cause of this). That contaminated product was taken to the packinghouse where it was processed. At that time the product was either mixed into batches of spinach from other farms and/or the bacteria got washed off into the wash water that was used for the rest of the day and contaminated all of the other products it came into contact with. This product was then shipped all over the United States .

Our scale of agriculture does not lend itself to these vulnerabilities. First, I can guarantee that produce grown on our farm does not have E. coli 157 because we do not use animal waste as fertilizer (although it is organic) and we are not near any livestock operations. Second, I can guarantee our packing is not contaminated by other grower's product because we only pack our own produce.

Enjoy your box this week and rest assured we know where all of it came from and it is all clean. - Thaddeus

Special Date! Sunday October 29

Capay Organic, our store in the S.F. Ferry Building, will be hosting free pumpkin decorating for any
children (or adults too). Pumpkin decorating will start at 3pm and we will be serving hot apple cider. We will be giving a talk on
how pumpkins grow and will have recipe cards for great things to cook with pumpkins.
Event will be from 3pm - 5pm

Farm Tour Update
Fall 2006
Get ready! We'll be hosting a work party on the farm in the fall. We
hope to see new faces along with familiar folks getting their hands
mucky in Capay dirt. Stay tuned...

We look forward to seeing you!

Please contact: Georgette at Georgette@farmfreshtoyou.com or call 800.796.6009 to
reserve space for you, family and friends.

Plan on arriving at the farm early in the morning, as close to 8am as possible. There will be actvities and walks planned for the whole family.

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