Gulp! As if the world weren't dangerous enough, the latest news from California is particularly disturbing. Seems that lettuce and spinach from the Salinas Valley might be contaminated with the dreaded E. coli O157:H7 bacteria.
Picking lettuce south of Monterey. Los Angeles Times photo
The last time we saw this, it was undercooked Jack-Inda-Box burgers and improperly pasteurized Odwalla juice. This time the excuse is convoluted: infected cow manure gets into streams that overflow into nearby feedlots and pastures; birds drink the water and drop polluted poop as they fly over the lettuce fields. One blighted head of lettuce, the processors argue, could taint the whole operation. Might. Ya can't prove nothin'.
Only solution, short of steaming or sautéing your salad: buy from local farmers, wash the leaves.
Ron -- After having lived in Florida for 20 years where we often had as many migrant farm workers as California, I can tell you why there's ALWAYS a high potential for e. coli on our picked vegetables (and why you should ALWAYS wash everything thoroughly). Everyone should think about this one carefully because it really proves out the old axiom of 'You get what you pay for.'
Apparently most farms pay their pickers so little and generally tend to pay on volume picked; so the poor workers are always under a lot of pressure to pick as much as possible all day long. Now let's see: I'm tired, hungry, hot and underpaid already picking this damn stuff for rich Americanos. If the Port-a-Potty is a 1/4-mile or more off the field so it means a 20+ minute walk, where do you think I'm gonna pee (or worse)?
Forget bird poop... that's not the big problem.
Gawd RobertinSeattle....now THAT'S a thought..yikes..the overworked and underpaid workers using our food supply as a toilet-O.
Wow...wash, wash, wash.
Now..maybe we should discuss those salads in a bag? Why do they seem so "preserved"??
It gets worse. Kerry Sear of Cascadia took me aside tonight to remind me that melons (to cite just one example) grow close to the, um, manure-covered ground. And when you cut into a melon, the knife takes whatever crud & crap is on the surface straigt into the heart of the fruit.
So dunk that melon in bleach before you cut it. Don't buy industrially packaged salad greens. Wash your produce.
I originally posted this piece as kind of a har-har-har. Nope, it's gonna change the way I buy food.
Guess what? It looks like the story's getting worse: apparently, infecting bacteria gets drawn up into the leaves through the root system so no amount of washing is going to get the sh*t out of there (pun intended!). New York Times is finally starting to dance around the possiblility of "animal feces" used for fertilization etc. Ha ha. You're getting warmer...