Wed, Sep. 20, 2006
The FDA’s alarm is extreme, area farmers say, and threatens their harvest this month.
By Edward Colimore, Michael Klein and Dianna Marder
Inquirer Staff Writers
Farmer Jamie Graiff of Gloucester County surveys his crop of baby leaf spinach. Usually, he would sell 14,000 pounds a week. As the Food and Drug Administration urges consumers to avoid all fresh spinach – bagged, bunched, organic, and otherwise – local farmers say the FDA actions may be unnecessarily extreme.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey farmers are poised to harvest their crops as early as this week, but supermarkets in both state are not buying in the wake of a particularly nasty outbreak of E. coli contamination.
The grocery shelves have been stripped, and the restaurant associations in both states say spinach should be off the menu entirely for now.
Locally, most restaurants are following the recommendation: Barclay Prime and Capital Grille are not offering their creamed spinach; Stephen Starr says none of his 14 restaurants is serving spinach, and Marathon Grill has taken it off the menu.
The FDA says the strain of E. coli is so virulent that no amount of washing or cooking raw spinach at home will ensure safety.
But Bill Nardelli, a Vineland farmer and head of the South Jersey Produce Distributors Association, protests that locally grown spinach in perfectly safe.
"It’s strictly a California issue," Nardelli says.
The outbreak of toxic E. coli 0157:H7, which started Aug. 2, has resulted in one death and 131 confirmed cases of illness in 21 states (including nine in Pennsylvania).
While the exact cause has not been pinpointed, the FDA says the outbreak was traced to California’s Salinas Valley, where spinach is bagged under as many as 34 brand names and distributed nationwide.
Still, the FDA yesterday reiterated its recommendation not to eat raw spinach from anywhere in the country until other farms are ruled out as sources of the outbreak. That process could take weeks, said David Acheson of the FDA.
"But we hope we get at least part-way to scaling back the advisory within 24 to 48 hours," Acheson said, adding that he hoped to put safe spinach back on the market as soon as possible.
Local chef Marc Vetri, of the tony Center City Italian restaurant Vetri, is one of the few who is still serving spinach dishes. His legendary spinach gnocchi is selling briskly. Vetri says he uses locally grown spinach and cooks it twice.
"No one is not ordering gnocchi," Vetri said.
At the Reading Terminal Market yesterday, Iovine Bros. was offering fresh spinach only in bunches – not bagged. Starting today, Iovine’s expects to offer a bagged spring mix that is guaranteed spinach-free.
But with so few using locally produced spinach now, area farmers say they face a huge financial hit.
In New Jersey, the nation’s fourth largest spinach producer, and Pennsylvania, which ranks ninth, growers are upset.
"Our [spinach] sales are zero right now," said Dan Graiff, a farmer in Newfield, Gloucester County, who grows baby spinach.
Graiff said that normally at this time of year, he would be selling about 14,000 pounds each week, worth about $30,000, but that none of the brokers he works with has taken any since Saturday.
Robert Pierson – who heads Philadelphia’s Farm to City program, working with 11 farmers’ markets that sell produce from 35 farms in Pennsylvania and New Jersey – said a contamination like this should be a good argument for buying locally. Now he worries that consumers soon will shun all greens.
"People are skeptical of anything bagged and processed," said Nardelli, the Vineland farmer.
Peter Bylone, manager of the Vineland Produce Auction in Vineland, said spinach growers are hoping the FDA acts quickly.
"Every operation across the country is affected by this. We’re not only a nationwide market, we’re a global market. We handle a New Jersey product, but the average consumer doesn’t know the difference between a New Jersey and California product."
Linda Marchione of Springfield, Delaware County, is among the cautious consumers. Marchione said she stopped her usual weekly practice of buying a plastic clamshell of spinach or mesclun with spinach.
"I’m just going to keep my distance for a while," said Marchione, who hasn’t used green onions since an outbreak three years ago of hepatitis A in western Pennsylvania (traced to green onions imported from Mexico).
While there are thousands of strains of E. coli, some with neutral and others with beneficial effects, this outbreak of 0157:H7 has led to 20 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome, which is a form of kidney failure.
Half of the E. coli cases confirmed by the FDA to date involve people between the ages of 20 and 64, and 73 percent are women.
Symptoms start with diarrhea and can include fever and abdominal pain. Individuals who believe they may have been infected are urged to seek medical attention.
Food health experts say E. coli can be spread a multitude of ways – by manure, by contaminated irrigation water, by farmhands relieving themselves in the field, by inadequate washing by processors, by insufficient refrigeration that promotes the growth of bacteria in sealed bags of salad greens.
And the current food-poisoning episode is the 20th since 1995 linked to spinach or lettuce, the FDA said.
Acheson, who answered reporters questions yesterday by teleconference, said canned or frozen spinach is OK to use, but fresh spinach should not be cooked at home.
"You’ll only risk contaminating the entire kitchen. The safest public health recommendation is don’t mess with it – throw it away."
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Contact staff writer Dianna Marder at 215-854-4211 or dmarder@phillynews.com. Inquirer staff writer Harold Brubaker contributed to this article.