 |
|||
 |
" I heard it |
||
October 3, 2011
· Produce miles increase disease risk
· Dole building new facilities in China
· Analysis: What’s next for E-Verify?
· Broccoli Brigade heads N. Mexico project
· Globetrotting couple ‘good bug’ hunting
Produce miles increase disease risk
WASHINGTON (AP) — The recent listeria outbreak from cantaloupe shows that large-scale occurrences of serious illnesses linked to tainted food have grown more common over the years, partly because much of what we eat takes a long and winding road from farm to fork.
A cantaloupe grown on a
Imported fruits and vegetables, which make up almost
two-thirds of the produce consumed in the
"Increasingly with agribusiness you have limited
producers of any given food, so a breakdown in a facility or plant or in a
large field crop operation exposes thousands because of the way the food is
distributed," says Dr. Brian Currie, an infectious disease specialist at
The
The company said last week that it can't provide a list of retailers that sold the tainted fruit because the melons were sold and resold. It named the 28 states where the fruit was shipped, but people in other states have reported getting sick.
A Kansas-based processor that purchased cantaloupes from Jensen, Carol's Cuts, didn't provide a notice to its customers that it had sold the farm's cantaloupes until nine days after the original recall.
"The food chain is very complex," says Sherri McGarry, a senior adviser in the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Foods. "There are many steps, and the more steps there are the harder it can be to link up each step to identify what the common source" of an outbreak is.
Fewer and larger farms and companies dominate food production in the country. That has driven some consumers to seek out farmers markets and locally grown produce. Supermarkets now highlight food grown nearby, while farmers markets have soared in popularity.
But many in the produce industry have come together to try and improve the ability to quickly trace food from field to plate.
This is good business. Large recalls, such as spinach in 2006, peanuts in 2009 and eggs in 2010, tend to depress sales for an entire product industry, even if only one company or grower was responsible for the outbreak.
Recent outbreaks of salmonella in peanuts and eggs, which are ingredients in thousands of foods, have been more widespread and sickened more people than have the tainted cantaloupe.
"There has been a laser focus on improving traceability so any recall can identify the affected product immediately and not have an effect on the rest of the entire category," says Ray Gilmer of United Fresh Produce Association, which represents the country's largest growers.
Gilmer says that larger food companies have no choice but to take food safety very seriously.
"The stakes for a large company to have a food safety incident are huge," he said. "It could destroy their company."
Listeria, a bacteria found in soil and water, often turns up in processed meats because it can contaminate a processing facility and stay there for a long period of time. It's also common in unpasteurized cheeses and unpasteurized milk, though less so produce such as cantaloupe.
The disease can cause fever, muscle aches, gastrointestinal symptoms and even death. One in five people who have listeria can die.
A food safety law passed by Congress last year gives the FDA new power to improve tracing food through the system. Food safety advocates say the law will help make the food network safer by focusing on making every step in the chain safer and making it easier to find the source of outbreaks.
For the first time, larger farms are required to submit plans detailing how they are keeping their produce safe.
Erik Olson, director of food and consumer safety programs for the Pew Health Group, says it is critical that those improvements are made to prevent more, larger outbreaks as the system grows more complex.
"Clearly the food industry has just changed enormously in the last several decades," Olson said. "It would be virtually impossible to sit down and eat a meal and eat food that hasn't come from all over the world."
Dole building new facilities in China
(fruitnet.com) – Dole Food Company, the world's largest fresh produce company, is working with government officials in China to develop new production and processing facilities in the country, the company's chairman David Murdock has revealed.
Speaking at a special event in
"Eight or nine days ago I was all over
Dole currently owns processing and distribution centres in
the Chinese cities of
The group's Worldwide Packaged Food Division operates three
processing centres for tinned products in Asia – two in
In terms of its overall Asian operations, Dole sources
bananas, pineapples, asparagus, mangoes, papaya and other fruits and vegetables
from the
The company also sources citrus, deciduous fruit and
vegetables, including asparagus, broccoli, tomatoes, cabbage and lettuce from
North America,
In
Analysis: What’s next for E-Verify?
(Forbes) – On September 21, 2011, H.R. 2885, legislation to make E-Verify mandatory across the nation, passed the House Judiciary Committee by a party line vote of 22-13. Does that mean the bill is on a smooth path to become law?
The major hurdle to be cleared for any House legislation is to receive time for debate on the floor of the House of Representatives. It is up to the House leadership to decide whether a bill gets that far. Unlike spending bills, which are considered “must-pass” pieces of legislation, bills on other topics are not guaranteed floor time.
If E-Verify legislation passes the House, it faces an uncertain future in the U.S. Senate. No Democrats voted for the bill in the House Judiciary Committee. While that does not mean the same will happen in the Senate, it’s reasonable to assume the bill would get limited Democratic support.
What does E-Verify legislation have going in its favor? In
its favor, the legislation sports a surface appeal as a way to prevent the
hiring of illegal immigrants and has the support of anti-immigration groups.
H.R. 2885 would make mandatory for all employers an electronic employment
verification system to check (primarily) whether new hires are eligible to work
in the
What is working against mandatory E-Verify legislation? The
biggest obstacle a mandatory E-Verify bill faces is it lacks support among
Democrats, which is a particular problem in the Senate. Many Democrats see H.R.
2885 as legislation that will make life more difficult for legal workers, due
to the potential for false “positives” when using the system. They also believe
to the extent E-Verify affects illegal immigrants it will push them further
into black market employment. Democrats would likely support mandatory E-Verify
if coupled with ways to make it easier to work legally in the
Another factor working against mandatory E-Verify legislation
is vocal opposition to the bill from the agriculture industry. The primary
large agriculture organizations, including the Agriculture Coalition for
Immigration Reform (ACIR), oppose the bill. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) said in the
Judiciary Committee that making E-Verify mandatory would “devastate”
The bill has also engendered opposition from libertarian and conservatives concerned that mandatory E-Verify would represent a significant expansion of federal authority. (See letter here.) A Wall Street Journal editorial (September 13, 2011, registration required) on E-Verify legislation was titled “Republican Overregulation.”
There has been no action on the bill in the past week, since the House of Representatives has not been in session. Judge Gideon Tucker (and later Mark Twain) once said, “No Man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” The House is back in session this week.
Broccoli Brigade heads N. Mexico project
(Las
Cruces Sun-News)
Broccoli seedlings in this NMSU pilot project, planted from seed in early July, are being transplanted from flats into fields this month, even as some other local vegetable crops are being harvested. Like other members of the mustard family, broccoli does best during the cooler spring and fall seasons in this climate zone.
Broccoli is not a crop that is commonly grown in the
The project involves approximately 20,000 plants that are being transplanted into one NMSU field and at five other area locations. The harvest from these plants is likely to begin in late October or early November and may extend into December.
The project is being implemented by a team dubbed the
"Broccoli Brigade" by Connie Falk, professor in the Department of
Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Business. In addition to Falk, the NMSU
team includes AEAB colleagues Eduardo Medina, small farm and ranch outreach
coordinator, and Paul Gutierrez, Extension specialist; assistant professors
Mark Uchanski and Kulbhushan Grover and master's student Alex Benitez, in the
Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences; and John Idowu, Extension
agronomist in the Department of Extension Plant Sciences. Community partners
are Shahid Mustafa, manager of the Mountain View Market Co-op in
The Broccoli Brigade came into existence in early 2011.
"We were all getting together to talk about how to move
the agenda of local agriculture forward," Falk said. "Shahid Mustafa,
the G.M. of Mountain View Co-op, said he could sell all the broccoli we could
produce and it was a pity we couldn't grow broccoli in
According to Falk, OASIS, or Organization of Aggie Students Inspiring Sustainability, is a student club at NMSU that began as an organic production class, which was also named OASIS (Organic Aggie Students Inspiring Sustainability).
"In that class, students learned the Community Supported Agriculture model of agriculture, and in five years grew more than 550 cultivars of organic vegetables, flowers and herbs," Falk said. "Broccoli was a successful crop at OASIS, which was taught during spring and fall seasons 2002-2006."
Uchanski and Falk also investigated season extension technologies in broccoli production for two years.
By mid-summer 2011, the Broccoli Brigade project, with a
fall harvest in mind, had been fleshed out.
The main summer activity, July 7-8, was to start 22,000
broccoli plants from seed in plastic flats with the help of some of the local
producers. The brigade chose
Information about this project, and about growing broccoli
more broadly, has been incorporated into NMSU classes taught by some of the
Broccoli Brigade members, and some of the students are involved in the project
as volunteers. Some in Uchanski's vegetable crop management class and Grover's
principles of crop production class have been among the individuals
transplanting 13,000-14,000 broccoli seedlings in an organic research plot at
NMSU's
The broccoli in this plot is involved in a replicated field experiment on broccoli fertility as part of Benitez's thesis project. All of it will be grown organically, with four fertilization treatments: fish emulsion injected through the drip irrigation system; locally available vermicompost applied as a side dress; a compost tea, made from the same compost material, applied through the drip system; and the control group with no fertilization. While Benitez doesn't expect the unfertilized plants to have a high yield, he thinks it is reasonable to expect some of the experimental rows to produce a pound of broccoli per plant.
The cooperating growers are not involved in replicated field trials, but will be using growing techniques appropriate to their operations. The local collaborators are supplying growing space and will share in the profits of a successfully grown crop. If all of the plots achieve optimal production, the team estimates the result will be between 12,000 and 14,000 pounds of broccoli harvested over several weeks' time.
Patricia Salas is a project coordinator for the Colonias Development Council and works with a "promotora" at each of the participating CDC community gardens.
"We got involved in the project after Eduardo Medina
brought the opportunity to our attention," she said recently at the
group's
Broccoli Brigade members assume that Mountain View Market
will receive the bulk of the harvest. If the production is very robust, some of
it may be passed on, through
"We've also been contacted by NMSU's food service," Falk said. "The new food service provider, Sodexo, is very interested in serving local food as much as possible, and so they are very interested in also purchasing some of the broccoli. We'd love to see some of it served on campus."
Economic analysis will be an important aspect of this
project. If local producers are to be convinced that raising broccoli can be
profitable in the
The Broccoli Brigade does not expect growers to flock to broccoli immediately. They plan to repeat the project in the fall of 2012, involving what they hope will be a larger set of community collaborators. In addition, for broccoli to be grown on more than just a few acres, post-harvest handling infrastructure will need to be developed, because broccoli is usually iced soon after harvest to remove field heat and extend shelf life. Working out the logistical aspects of the enterprise, including storage, transport and broader marketing, will happen over the next couple of years.
"If we do well with the broccoli project, then we'll probably consider what the next crop is, in consultation with farmers and looking at what might sell well in the market. So it's a long-term kind of effort," Falk said.
Globetrotting couple ‘good bug’ hunting
An entomologist couple
at UC Riverside travel the world searching for parasites to counter imported
pests. Their lab is a high-security warren of trick doors and rooms within
rooms.
By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times
Mark Hoddle waits for the door to click into place. A magnetic sensor won't let him open the next door, just an arm's length away, until the first has been sealed shut.
Then he's walking through a maze of darkened corridors. Black lights — positioned to lure and then zap any fugitive bugs — cast a dim lavender glow that suggests rather than reveals the way forward.
Finally, Hoddle reaches a high-security laboratory. Inside,
behind a wall of glass, his wife and fellow entomologist, Christina, hunches
over a microscope. Ornate green earrings from
When Hoddle raps on the glass, quarantine officer Imad Bayoun stops him: The alarms could go off.
Christina, looking up, brandishes a vial the width of a pinkie.
"See that little black speck?" Hoddle says. Trapped inside are tiny parasitic insects that the couple traveled halfway around the globe to find.
"Each year,
They arrive on ships, in produce, on unsuspecting humans and animals. Many are harmless, but some wreak havoc, often because they're no longer held in check by parasites that afflicted them in their native habitats.
That's where entomologists like the Hoddles come in. They believe the solution is to make life miserable for invasive critters by importing their natural enemies. It's an approach called "biological control," and it has taken the couple around the world in search of exotic parasites, which they bring home in Rubbermaid containers. They've grown accustomed to grillings by airport security officers.
Much about their life
mirrors their professional obsession. They were married six years ago at the
Mission Inn in
The complex, with gleaming greenhouses on each level, looks distinctly modern from the outside. Inside, it's a warren of trick doors and rooms within rooms designed to securely hold insects until they've been thoroughly studied.
"Anything that goes into that building can't escape," Hoddle said.
At least not until the Hoddles have the all-clear to unleash a pest against its enemies.
Insects are among the most troublesome of invasive species. They multiply quickly, can travel far and are hard to detect. Controlling them with pesticides is costly because the chemicals have to be sprayed on crops every season. Pesticides can't be used in uncultivated areas because they would kill all bugs, good and bad.
"They do well for the same reasons we like living here," Hoddle said of the interlopers. "Great climate, pretty much all year-round; lots of food. And, most importantly, they've escaped their natural enemies."
Finding those enemies isn't easy. First, the Hoddles have to figure out where a pest came from. Then they have to go there and find it. The final step is to identify parasites that prey on the offending bug and bring them back to UC Riverside for study.
With funding from the
state and federal agriculture departments and the citrus industry, the Hoddles
have traveled to
In studying the
problem, Mark Hoddle came across an obscure 1927 paper in which researchers reported
finding parasitic wasps that fed on the citrus psyllid in Punjab, which has a
climate similar to that of
In
They flew home with a Rubbermaid box full of specimens of two kinds of stingless wasps that prey on the psyllid.
Alarms buzzed when
Mark's passport went under the scanner at
After further questioning at LAX, the pair rushed to the UC Riverside quarantine facility, where they deposited the insects on laboratory plants to get them breeding.
They hope the newly
discovered parasitoids (the technical term for parasitic creatures that
ultimately kill or sterilize their hosts) will help eradicate the citrus
psyllid as successfully as another critter wiped out the glassy-winged
sharpshooter in
The sharpshooter, native to Mexico and the Southeastern United States, exploded in numbers after arriving in California in the 1980s, infecting crops with a bacterial blight called Pierce's disease.
In 1999, shipments of
ornamental plants, probably from Southern California, accidentally took the
sharpshooter to
Hoddle and his colleagues released a parasitic wasp from their collection into the wild there. The wasp preys on the sharpshooters by laying eggs inside sharpshooter eggs; these then hatch and eat the sharpshooter eggs from the inside out.
Within seven months,
the sharpshooters had practically vanished from
"Bye-bye, peeing fly," a newspaper headline crowed in French.
As the sharpshooter populations plummeted, so did the newly introduced parasitoids. Now, Hoddle said, "they just play hide-and-seek around the island." That's the beauty of biological control, he said — the two populations keep each other in balance.
Despite such
successes, some scientists express concern about opening the Pandora's box of
pest-on-pest combat. Peter Stiling, an ecologist at the
And then there is the
case of the cactus moth, whose larvae eat the prickly pear, a cactus from the
"It's like releasing the genie out of the bottle," he said. "You can never get it back in."
Hoddle is aware of such "friendly fire" risks. "We don't want our good guy to wipe out another good guy," he said.
That's why all waste products in the UC Riverside testing facility are cooked for days, why whole floors between each level are dedicated to plumbing and electricity so that maintenance workers never enter testing floors, and why every inner room has slightly less air pressure than adjacent rooms, so that any AWOL bug will get sucked back in, Hoddle said.
Fellow UC Riverside entomologist Raju Pandey wears a bodysuit and hood when working in the facility's highest-security levels — and then takes further precautions. He fashions discount ladies' nylons into wrist guards to keep insects from hitchhiking out of the building under his sleeves. He uses only white or brown nylons, so that stray bugs will be visible.
The Hoddles and coworkers are now testing their Punjabi wasps on the citrus psyllid during long hours in the high-security quarantine. It is a grueling process. They grow trees, in pots, on which the insects are bred. Then they sic the parasitoids on them.
They grow more trees, breed more insects and test them again, and again.
"Bugs don't take weekends," Christina Hoddle said, "so neither do we."
If the tests pass
muster with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the North American Plant
Protection Organization, which sets standards for the
But until the parasitoids prove their worth, the scientists are stuck with their captives in rooms within rooms, behind walls of glass and metal.
End Transmission