E. coli traced to manure, but “no smoking cow” yet

As reported first by the San Francisco Chronicle, the California Department of Health Services has traced the strain of E. coli O157:H7 bacteria that sickened hundreds of spinach-eating human victims to three cow pies found in a nearby pasture. The pasture is part of a beef cattle ranch that also leases its fields to spinach growers. Officials are not releasing the name of the ranch, and they say they're still investigating other potential sources.

So far, nobody seems to know how the E. coli got from the cowshit into the spinach fields. The most likely culprit, according to the Chronicle: feral pigs, which had already gotten through fences on the cattle operation and might have then spread it through the spinach fields as they snacked. The Washington Post says irrigation water and poor worker hygiene could still be to blame, and basically, there's "no smoking cow" yet.

Federal regulators say they're concerned about the practice of raising cattle near fields that grow salad greens, and the industry is scrambling to develop its own stricter guidelines about minimum distance, upslope and down slope between pasture and fields. As Tom Philpott wrote yesterday in Grist, more regulation is simply a Band-Aid on problems caused by large-scale agricultural operations — and a huge impediment to small farmers.

Cows have been shitting near or in farming operations for years. When composted correctly, that waste product is recycled into a free, bountiful, healthy way to nourish the soil and grow vegetables. Instead of enforcing everyone to adopt a more industrialized, "sanitary" factory version of production, perhaps government officials and agencies might want to look closely at whether massive food-system centralization can ever really be made safe.

In the meantime, there's great spinach to be had at West Coast farmers markets. Enjoy it.