ERS spinach report

I saw Linda Calvin, economist with the USDA Economic Research Service, at today's meeting of the USDA fruit and vegetable industry advisory committee. It prompted me to think of the report on spinach she recently published in the USDA's Amber Waves online magazine. Here is the link.

Here are some excerpts:

Many factors could influence the number of outbreaks traced to produce, but two are particularly relevant to spinach. First, consumption of produce has increased, as has the share consumed fresh. U.S. consumers are eating more spinach, up 90 percent since 1992, and eating more fresh—the most risky form for microbial contamination. In 2005, the average consumer ate 2.4 pounds of fresh spinach, up 180 percent since 1992. An estimated 75-90 percent of fresh-market ­spinach is processed into fresh-cut salads or bagged spinach. Overall, consumption of processed spinach has trended downward since 1996. The heat used in processing kills E. coli O157:H7.
The second factor affecting the number of outbreaks is the increasing concentration within the produce industry. If something goes wrong at an operation handling a large volume of product, the number of ill consumers may be quite large and the outbreak may be more likely to be detected. For example, in the capital-intensive bagged-salad industry, two processing firms account for about 90 percent of the retail market.

Later..

Retail sales of bagged spinach and bagged salads with spinach have recovered more slowly than bunched spinach. During the period January 24-February 24, 2007, 5 months after the outbreak, the value of retail sales of bagged spinach was still down 27 percent from the same period a year ago, although that was much improved from the low fall 2006 sales. Sales of bagged salads with spinach show similar trends. Sales of bagged salads without spinach were down 5 percent; part of the decline may be due to the spinach outbreak, but there were also two smaller outbreaks in late 2006 that were linked to lettuce that probably shook consumer confidence.

On regulation...


For the first time, some in the produce industry are calling for the Federal Government to step in and regulate food safety. In January 2007, the United Fresh Produce Association adopted a set of principles declaring that for food safety standards to be credible to consumers, they must be mandatory, Government approved, based on commodity-specific needs, applied consistently across producers of the same commodity, and subject to Federal oversight. This would resolve the problem that growers face of determining what level of precautions is enough. Support for this position probably varies among producer groups.
Whoever sets the standards—industry or government—will have the same challenge: to develop science-based practices that reduce risk at the minimum cost.