Rocky Mountain News, CO
09-22-06
Eat your greens, save the spinach
Critics of factory farms ignore the benefits
The E. coli spinach scare offered plenty of obvious alibis for kids who don't like their veggies - not to mention a potent target for critics of "factory farming."
By Thursday, officials in Washington were gaining confidence that the bacterial outbreak was confined to no more than nine farms in California's Salinas Valley, the 19th time since 1995 an E. coli outbreak has come from salad greens grown there.
The most likely source may be irrigation water that came from streams in which cattle had defecated.
If indeed the tainted spinach is limited to the Salinas Valley, the federal government must move quickly and encourage the return of fresh spinach from other growers to the shelves.
California may raise more than 70 percent of the nation's spinach - Arizona is the source of an additional 12 percent of the leafy greens - but Colorado farmers play a significant role, too. The state ranks fifth nationally in production, just behind
Texas and New Jersey.
It's senseless to allow produce posing no danger to the public rot in the fields.
Meantime, critics of free trade and consumer choice have exploited the legitimate safety concerns posed by the salad scare to charge that large agribusiness operations endanger Americans' health. For instance, an article in Grist, a popular online publication targeted at 20-somethings with green sympathies, urged readers to buy produce only from nearby farmers or grow their own.
Americans' "obsession with convenience," the article claimed, "bears a significant health risk."
Nonsense. Demanding that consumers purchase only local produce is a recipe for limited choice and possibly even poor health.
Thanks to our nationwide free-trade zone, and produce imported from abroad,
Americans are eating more fresh fruits and vegetables year-round, not just when they're in season.
U.S. produce imports have nearly tripled since 1980. Overall, the average
American ate 346 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables in 2004 - a 47 percent gain from 1970.

So-called "industrial farms" have in fact been mostly a boon for Americans, notwithstanding the rare case of foodborne illnesses that have been linked to them.
An Iowa State University study found that the typical food store - whether it's a supermarket or a medium-sized grocery - displays nearly 550 varieties of fresh fruits and veggies. That's up from 350 items in 1994. Greater selection encourages healthier choices.
If it becomes more costly or unfashionable to buy produce that's not raised locally, it's possible that obesity, diabetes, cancer and other medical problems may become even more pervasive.
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The healthiest option is to make it even easier to serve fresh fruits and veggies at home - whether they're grown in a backyard garden or on a farm thousands of miles away.