I'm strong to the finach

[madbaker]

Andy Griffin, one of the organic farmers from whom our CSA box comes, sounds off about the recent spinach contamination.

Comments

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Here's another interesting slant, in the NYT. (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/opinion/21planck.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin)

About three years ago I did some work to estimate the amount of groundwater pollution resulting from dairies in CA. We were mostly concerned with nitrate, which is highly mobile in groundwater, though fortunately not very toxic to anyone more than a year old. In the course of that work, though, I encountered a lot of pretty scary information about the confined-animal-facility manure problems all over the US.

Other sources are beginning to allege the source of the contaminated spinach was in the Salinas Valey. That region derives virtually all of its irrigation water from wells, not rivers or lakes, so it's less likely that the E. coli came from contaminated runoff. Wind-blown dust, however, seems quite likely to me.