California Coast & Ocean

No Dogs No Frogs
Fresh Express, purchased in 2005 for $855 million by Chiquita Brands International, is the nation's top producer of packaged salads, producing 40 percent of those sold in supermarkets. Last year the company processed 1.2 billion pounds of raw lettuce and spinach. Although it signed the Western Growers agreement in April, Fresh Express has its own far more demanding requirements for greens it buys.

Jim Lugg, senior food safety scientist with Fresh Express, has worked with the Salinas-based company since 1963. He said the company supplies growers with its own set of field management guidelines and good agricultural practices, but would not provide me with these, saying they are a "proprietary document protected by copyright." Instead, he referred me to an October 23, 2006 article in USA Today ("Fresh Express leads the pack in produce safety") that outlines some general requirements.

According to this article, Fresh Express will not accept produce from fields grown within a mile of a cattle feed lot or dairy operation, or if they are within 150 yards of rivers or habitats that attract wildlife. Fields that show evidence of wild pig visitation cannot be harvested for two years. The company also demands fences and rodent traps every 50 feet around field perimeters.

"If we find animal tracks in a field," Lugg told me, "then we don't believe that the product is safe to harvest." That means, he said, any animals--from frogs to dogs. "We don't like to see animals in a field of lettuce. We don't think people like the idea." Asked if this were more about cosmetic issues than food safety, he replied: "What you need to realize is that many more bovine intestines have been studied than mice to see if they are carriers of E. coli. Maybe mice and kangaroo rats are just as risky as large animals." He added that among studies the company has funded is one to examine whether insects are disseminating 0157.

Asked whether he had talked with environmental agencies about the impact of Fresh Express food safety guidelines on riparian habitats in the Salinas Valley, Lugg responded: "It's not our place to do that. Some public agencies need to do that."

Steve Church is a co-owner of the Salinas-based Church Brothers, a large grower, shipper, and processing company known for its True Leaf Farms brand. Shortly after the outbreak, Church Brothers announced that it would install six miles of additional fencing around its lots "to prevent any wildlife intrusion into our fields." In late May, the company announced a price increase of 20 cents per package on all True Leaf and Church Brothers produce. It justified the increase as a cost of its new food safety measures, including fencing. Steve Church is a member of the California Leafy Green Handler Marketing Board, which makes recommendations to the secretary of agriculture and the CDFA on the operation of Western Growers' Marketing Agreement and the inspection program intended to give it teeth.

I asked Church about the apparent contradiction between the Marketing Agreement and Fresh Express's more aggressive stance toward fencing and wildlife.

"We [Church Brothers] adhere to Fresh Express guidelines," he said. "You gotta do that if you want to be a vendor, or not sell to them. If you grow for Fresh Express, you're more limited in the land you can use. Their recommendations go beyond the agreement."

Farmers in the Crossfire
Bob Martin, a past president of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, is general manager of Rio Farms, one of the largest growers and employers in King City. These days he spends much of his time trying to make sense of demands imposed in the name of safety by various buyers and handlers who contract for his produce and market it.

"I grow for several different companies, and each one is requiring a different level of compliance," he said. "They're fighting for customer bases in the big box stores, Costco and Wal-Mart. They're battling for those accounts by saying 'My product is safer than yours.'"

"I understand we have to get consumers' confidence back," he continued. "Spinach sales haven't recovered. We're only selling 75-80 percent of our produce, and bagged salads have taken a big hit. But a lot of this is all smoke and mirrors. We need good solid research that will tighten up some of these metrics. How long does the bacterium survive in soil? In water? Are deer really an issue? How far will E. coli 0157:H7 travel in the wind? People are looking for answers."

Last April, speaking at a conference on water quality and food safety in San Luis Obispo, Martin told of farmers being asked to fence their fields and tear out riparian habitat that they have restored to comply with environmental regulations. He pleaded to his audience, which included researchers from the National Science Foundation, the USDA, and the FDA, as well as academic microbiologists, environmental scientists, and crop and food safety specialists: Farmers need help, now. He urged the researchers to talk to industry leaders.