Health & Science: Organic vegetables may pose hidden dangers
Copyright © 2002
Scripps Howard News Service
By LANCE GAY, Scripps Howard News Service
ATLANTA (March 3, 2002 9:29 a.m. EST) - Those leafy vegetables and fresh carrots look so good and nutritious on the supermarket shelves. But appearances are deceptive - produce grown on manure could be harboring unseen pathogens that could make you very sick.
Scientists attending an Institute of Food Technologists meeting here say the trends away from artificial fertilizers and back to organic farming and using manure to grow fruits and vegetables pose a danger. Pathogens such as E. coli, shigella and salmonella that grow in the stomachs of animals can be transferred to leafy greens, strawberries and root vegetables.
Michael Doyle, director of the center for food safety at the University of Georgia, said tests found that from 1.2 percent to 4.4 percent of produce tested positive for salmonella or shigella, which is picked up from the soil, transferred from manure used to fertilize plants, or transferred to the produce from water used in processing.
"We know that produce can contain harmful pathogens," he said.
Doyle and other scientists say they worry that the trend toward organic farming and greater use of manure could result in more outbreaks of food diseases. He said that consumers must take as much care in handling fresh fruits and vegetables as they do with raw meats.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington food safety interest group, said contaminated produce - including sprouts, lettuce, berries and cantaloupe - was responsible for 148 outbreaks of food poisoning in the United States between 1990 and 2001, with 10,504 people made ill.
One of the country's worst produce-related outbreaks of food poisoning was in New England in 1996, when 61 people were made sick - 21 of them hospitalized - with a particularly lethal strain of E. coli. The problem was tracked to a California producer who grew salad greens in fields fed by water from an adjacent beef cattle farm.
Paul Mead, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said some food poisoning outbreaks caused by produce aren't being detected when they occur.
Mead said a computer analysis uncovered a previously undetected 1999 outbreak of salmonella poisoning that researchers were able to trace back to mangoes imported from Brazil. Mead said the outbreak was only revealed after investigators searched for the reasons for an unusual spike in reported salmonella cases, and salmonella-contaminated toads were found living in the water the Brazilian farm used to wash the mangoes.
The Centers for Disease Control earlier this year renewed its warning to consumers to fully cook alfalfa sprouts, often served raw in salads and sandwiches, after an outbreak in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico last year sickened 32 people. Researchers traced the problem to sprouts grown in contaminated water.
Barbara Robinson, deputy administrator of the Department of Agriculture's national organic program - the agency developing standards for foods brought to supermarket shelves as "organic" - said organic farming regulations aim to reduce the risk of transfers of pathogens from manure.
Farmers enrolling in the program are prohibited from using raw manure on edible crops within 120 days of harvest, or are required to use manure composted to kill pathogens. The National Organic Program was introduced last year, and is to be fully implemented in October, when labels are to appear on products declaring they are "100 percent organic" or "organic" for products that contain 95 percent organic materials.
"There are very specific restrictions," Robinson said. Farmers have to keep proper documentation of how they are using manure on the soil, and when it was administered.
U.S. livestock produce 1.3 billion tons of manure a year. Environmentalists have long sought to encourage a return to organic gardening as a way of reducing the stockpile.
Katherine DiMatteo, executive director of the Organic Trade Association, a group representing organic farmers and processors, said proper handling of manure can reduce pathogens.
"Organic farming has addressed all those things in regulations," she said.
DiMatteo said modern organic farms actually use less manure than traditional farms because they rely on crop rotation, the planting of cover crops, and using composted material to replace artificial fertilizers.
Lee-Ann Jaykus, associate professor of food microbiology at North Carolina State University, said the best prevention of food disease is to stop pathogens on the farm.
"But stopping all pathogens at the production level is not possible at this time," she said, urging consumers to use common sense in the kitchen.
nandotimes.com
Natural and Nauseating
The U.S. government has said time and again that organic foods have no added health benefits. Organic marketers hawk their products by trash-talking traditional production, but it turns out their own wares may actually be dangerous. According to Scripps Howard News Service, pathogens such as E. coli, shigella and salmonella "can be transferred to leafy greens, strawberries and root vegetables" grown through organic methods -- that is, grown in animal manure.
They "look so good and nutritious," but "appearances are deceptive" -- manure growing can pose a danger to consumers. Even the Center for Science in the Public Interest says that such produce contamination caused over 10,000 cases of illness in the U.S. in the past decade. While organic marketers say they are working to stop contamination, North Carolina State University microbiologist Lee-Ann Jaykus says "stopping all pathogens at the production level is not possible at this time."
According to the University of Houston's Dr. Thomas DeGregori, manure used in organic fertilization "may harbor toxic chemicals, viruses, harmful bacteria, insects, worms, or other pests." Still sound tasty?
consumerfreedom.com
A Con Worth Twice The Price?
"Organic food, once touted as the key to improving dietary health… is not living up to its wholesome green credentials," Britain's Channel Four reports. Consumers have a "growing cynicism about how healthy organic food actually is," and many "say the cost -- often twice that of normal produce," just isn't worth it. Writes one commentator: "People are beginning to believe that organic food is a bit of a con, that it is not all that it is cracked up to be."
Of course, as one advertising expert puts it, "eco-friendly is… a huge business." And writing in The Chicago Tribune, Marian Burros warns: "[in] the early days of organic food… anyone could claim a food was organically grown." But today, "self-starting watchdogs… like the Rain Forest Alliance charge for their seal of approval." That, too, drives up consumer prices. (For more on such groups, visit ActivistCash.com.)
But those in the organic biz think the more expensive food is, the better off the world is: As Theresa Marquez, marketing director for Organic Valley, has said: "The question is not, why is organic food so expensive. The question is, why are the foods we are eating now so cheap."
consumerfreedom.com |
