Help!

Is it time for the leafy greens industry to invite regulation? The Monterey County Herald wrote this editorial on Sept. 21:

Time for grower industry to get outside help
THE HERALD'S VIEW Where we see successful and honorable farmers, processors, shippers and packers, much of the country is now seeing hooves.
An ancient piece of wisdom goes something like this: If someone calls you a donkey, ignore them. But if quite a few people call you a donkey, check for hooves.
It may be time for the Salinas Valley produce industry to check for hooves.
In the aftermath of last year's E. coli outbreak in the spinach industry, the local ag community did a great job of assessing likely causes and quickly improving handling, testing and tracking procedures.
The industry, acting logically and not at all like a donkey, pressed for industry-designed and industry-monitored standards, which eventually became known as the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, calling it a faster and more effective alternative to new layers of government regulation.
The thinking was that no one knows the issues and the processes better than the industry. Certainly not the USDA, FDA or other government entities with limited experience in the produce fields. No one has more incentive to get it right than the industry.
While the idea of large fines hanging over the industry's head might comfort some buyers, industry leaders saw it as a weak supplement to the industry's unquestioned need to rebuild and retain consumer confidence.
On the one hand: fear of sanctions. On the other: fear of lost markets and economic ruin. The second course, chosen by the industry, was no less demanding than the first.
Despite inability to cite shining examples of government food-safety programs, consumer groups and some legislators fought the industry plan, making too much of the notion that its requirements were "voluntary."
Through some effective lobbying, the industry managed to ward off efforts to impose a more laborious system led by the state — more laborious but not necessarily any more effective.
The industry essentially prevailed, but the prize was to be put into the hopeless position of needing to deliver perfect product with virtually no margin for error.
With a dozen years of less dramatic but well documented E. coli cases behind it, with three deaths traced to Central Coast spinach a year ago, the industry was under tremendous pressure to ensure that the troubles were over.
Adding to the pressure was the fact that the full lineup of industry experts, federal regulators and plant scientists still don't know exactly how the system had broken down in the past. And with the pressure came tremendous scrutiny.
An expanding group of industry critics pounced last month after a recall of local spinach when samples tested positive for salmonella. They've pounced even more energetically following last weekend's news of an E. coli discovery in a bag of Dole salad mix Canada.
Despite no reports of health problems, speedy confirmation that some lettuce in the shipment came from the Salinas Valley prompted an excited round of "gotcha" aimed at the local industry.
It didn't seem to matter that no one could tell yet whether the contamination originated here or somewhere else along the line, such as the fields of Colorado or Ohio, where some of the greens were grown, or in an Ohio processing plant.
Still, the loud reaction all across the nation shows that the industry's relationship with the consuming public, regulatory agencies, legislators, produce buyers and others who matter has dropped far below where it needs to be if the industry is to move forward and prosper, which is critical to the region as well as the industry.
We remain convinced that the industry is fully capable of protecting the consumer as well or better than state or federal regulators could. That's because we know the people in the industry. They're our neighbors. Most are family farmers in various permutations, not greedy cost-cutters.
Unfortunately, a nation of nervous salad eaters doesn't know them in the same way. Where we see successful and honorable farmers, processors, shippers and packers, much of the country is now seeing hooves.
It seems time for the industry to accept all the help it can get from state and federal regulators, time to work quickly toward establishing stronger nationwide safety standards and to reassess both its testing procedures and the practice of mixing products from different sources.
Rather than shouldering all the responsibility themselves, it seems time for industry leaders to agree to additional conditions, even those that make little sense except from a public relations perspective.
Taking that path would take much of the pressure off and, at the same time, could actually make the products safer.
It could even provide a ompetitive boost to the local industry by requiring the industry in other states to adopt new safety practices, some of them quite expensive, that are already in place here.

TK: This editorial was posted in the Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group. From that thread, I'm posting a comment from Luis. He makes a good point about perception and consumer attitudes. From Luis:

Obviously perception can be shaped. See it Court TV all the time when two members of a jury are presented with the same situation but come to different conclusions depending on how the case is made by the defense and the prosecution.
At any rate, the idea that industry is somehow "resisting" government oversight is such a huge misperception. The industry is regulated and is and has been working all along to improve food safety with State and Federal partners. However, the China import situation etc. now has some consumers suspicious of producers as well as government.
Why, some would argue, do we need more regulation if the regulatory agencies do not have enough inspectors (in house or outsourced) and are not fully equipped to provide sound scientific risk assessments that can guide growers and policy makers. On the other hand, some feel that growers may know field conditions and growing practice best but are not microbiologist/epidemiologists or disinterested parties either.
I guess if regulatory agencies, growers, politicos and activistas are seen squabbling with each other rather than credibly fighting the real enemy. Namely, Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7 etc. we may end up looking a bit internally like China and externally having US product being no so welcome overseas.