A recent report regarding E. coli outbreaks may have understated a very complex situation.
As AgNet West reported last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a summarizing report of E. coli outbreaks over the last few years. The report stated the all of the events traced back to neighboring livestock operations as the source of contamination. The FDA called these incidents ‘reasonably foreseeable hazards’.
“The response to that statement is if this is a reasonably foreseeable hazard, it would be something that we could certainly mitigate for and certainly be able to discover,” Monterey County Farm Bureau Executive Director Norm Groot said. “That’s not what we are dealing with at this point.”
The majority of leafy green-producing areas in the U.S. are along the California coast and Yuma, Arizona. Both regions also have healthy livestock production. Groot said more information is needed before this becomes a ‘foreseeable’ situation. “We are dealing with some really random situations which do not have any cause and effect,” Groot said.
Listen to the full radio report.
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