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The Science Is Clear: Dirty Farm Water Is Making Us Sick
- bluGill 8y agoI wish I could buy irradiated salad which would solve this problem. Organic cannot be treated this way and people are convinced organic is better so I can't get what is really safe.
- LiterallyDoge 8y agoAnd zergling free.
- ourmandave 8y agoA nice Protossed salad.
- LiterallyDoge 8y agoI hate you. Have an upvote.
- dmm 8y agoI wish I could buy salad uncontaminated by feces but I guess I'll take irradiated if feces salad is all we can get.
- bluGill 8y agoA co-worker (I work for John Deere) went to look at a lettuce farm during harvest. He had to wear gloves and a hair net. He looked up and there were birds flying overhead with not even a diaper! Moral of this story: all greens are contaminated with feces - wash your greens.
- novia 8y agoBirds typically poop as they take off to fly. Less weight to carry. E. coli outbreaks are typically caused by animal farm runoff, especially from hog or cattle farms.
- bluGill 8y agoBirds can poop in the air at anytime. Takeoff is the most common one of course - but that isn't even an out as the birds are feeding in that field and thus landing.
- novia 8y agoOh, I gotcha. I thought the birds were only flying above, not landing and eating. In that case, wouldn't the onus be on the harvester to not pick produce that has obvious bird poop on it?
- bluGill 8y agoyeah, but the rain last week washed the visible poop off - but there are invisible residues left. (others have pointed out you cannot wash e.coli off - I'm not qualified to evalueate that claim but if true washing isn't enough)
- coredog64 8y agoA biology major coworker explained that it’s even deeper than that. Most birds optimize for weight by not having muscles for controlling bowel movements. Rather they take advantage of inertia and let their initial dive provide the bulk of the energy for solid waste evacuation.
- dmm 8y ago> wash your greens. Washing greens will not remove E. coli contamination. > birds The contamination causing the current E. Coli outbreak was almost certainly caused by feces from an animal farm and has nothing to do with wild birds.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- novia 8y agoWhy not require the animal farmers to irradiate all poop that they put into their lagoons? For context, it is my understanding that E. coli breakouts are caused by those lagoons overflowing during rainstorms if they are not managed correctly.
- philipkglass 8y agoMost of the fresh greens at the grocery store nearest to me are not organic. None are irradiated. Whatever prevents romaine from being irradiated, it's not exclusive to organic certification. The only grocery items I can specifically recall seeing marked irradiated are spices. I'm speaking of grocery stores in Oregon and Washington.
- seccess 8y agoThis paper from 2010 has some info on why this may be the case [0]: "These results indicate that the protection of bacteria on the leaf surface by biofilm formation and stomatal colonization can reduce the antimicrobial efficacy of irradiation on leafy green vegetables." [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20629883 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20629883
- jermaustin1 8y agoThis is despicable. The cost difference is 9 fold between the consumer-end medical expenses vs the producer-end safety testing. In the US where we have a flimsy excuse for a safety net, and still-too-high uninsured rate, the fact that this regulation has been pulled off of businesses, and instead the burden placed onto the consumer is shameful. There are certainly families who have been harmed economically and irreparably so because of this. Now that I'm done ranting, why is so much of the romaine lettuce market concentrated in Yuma, AZ?
- mc32 8y agoIt'd be interesting to look at the economics of growing leafy greens like this under artificial light (vertical/automated) farming. IIRC, leafy greens are currently the main mainstream (i.e non pot) product which is economically viable to grow indoors. Japan turned a shuttered semi factory[1] of some sort into an automated leafy greens farm. One would hope in this case there is no indirect contamination, if the actual soil beneath the campus was contaminated. [1]https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/travel-food/article/2094791/future-farming-japan-goes-vertical-and-moves-indoors https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/travel-food/article/209...
- bjelkeman-again 8y agoIn the Netherlands, in Spain and many other places leafy greens are grown in greenhouses. So you only need to supplement with artificial light. Up north where I live in Sweden we also have greenhouses, but there are quite a few pilot projects with vertical farming indoors (not in greenhouses) including a side project of mine with aquaponics in an old barn.
- mc32 8y agoThe thjng that throws a wrench into the economics of this in the US is that land in semi-arid regions is very cheap, and imported farm labor is also cheap, so those close to a water source and cheap labor, can be very competitive compared to anything else.
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- gowld 8y agohttps://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/food-poisoning-information/marler-what-you-need-to-know-about-e-coli/ https://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/food-poisoning-information... "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has estimated that every year at least 2,000 Americans are hospitalized, and about 60 die as a result of E. coli infection and its complications. A study published in 2005 estimated the annual cost of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses to be $405 million (in 2003 dollars), which included $370 million for premature deaths, $30 million for medical care, and $5 million for lost productivity." US GDP is $20T/yr, 325 Mpopulation. The cost of E.coli is 1/50K of US GDP, affecting about 1 person per 150K per year, killing 1 in 5 million. Meanwhile, second-hand is claimed to kill 7000 people per year and cost $5B/yr. https://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/smoking-facts/health-effects-of-secondhand-smoke.html https://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/smoking-facts/health-effec...
- namuol 8y agoWhat's your point? Are smoking/tobacco regulation and E Coli testing somehow mutually exclusive?
- namuol 8y ago> “I think the whole thing is an overblown attempt to exert government power over us,” said Bob Allen, a Washington state apple farmer. I'm really looking forward to the urban farming revolution.
- CompelTechnic 8y agoWhat are you implying?
- glibgil 8y agoA fantasy
- namuol 8y agoIt's just an engineering/scaling problem. Large-scale urban farming via large rooftop greenhouses could dramatically lower the total cost of growing some foods, especially if you consider the future environmental cost of land-use and fossil fuel emissions from transportation.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoIf you own a rooftop I guess. All those people living in apartments (most of humanity) have to share one, which doesn't scale. A yuppie 'solution'
- namuol 8y agoI'm not talking about every family having their own little "plot" on their own little roof. I'm talking about large greenhouses covering large buildings.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoStill doesn't work? It takes 300-400 sq ft of greenhouse per person to feed them. An apt house roof could feed how many? 20? 50? And 2000 people may live in that building. Make the building taller, now 3000 people life there, and the greenhouse is no larger. That's what 'not scaling' looks like. We have commercial farming because it takes that to feed us.
- sevensor 8y agoDoes rinsing salad greens do anything to remove e. coli? Or does that just get the mud off?
- pbreit 8y agoThis is a classic example of incorrectly blaming Trump for everything bad. The breathless media made it seem like Trump had halted ongoing testing despite that it had never actually started in the first place.
- scrooched_moose 8y agoThe testing would have started well before this outbreak if the administration hadn't postponed the rule change: > After several high-profile disease outbreaks linked to food, Congress in 2011 ordered a fix, and produce growers this year would have begun testing their water under rules crafted by the Obama administration’s Food and Drug Administration. > But six months before people were sickened by the contaminated romaine, President Donald Trump’s FDA – responding to pressure from the farm industry and Trump’s order to eliminate regulations – shelved the water-testing rules for at least four years. I don't understand how "it had never actually started in the first place" is relevant at all. There were plans to help address this problem, but those plans were delayed by the Trump administration.
- turc1656 8y ago"I don't understand how "it had never actually started in the first place" is relevant at all. There were plans to help address this problem, but those plans were delayed by the Trump administration." It's relevant because of a comment another user made here, which explains why the tests are not effective and would almost certainly have not resulted in catching this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18536230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18536230 The full Tweet thread linked to in that comment provides more info but the base theme is that the tests are not an appropriate solution because spot checks would not catch events like this. https://mobile.twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1067096098194550784 https://mobile.twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/10670960981...
- lkbm 8y agoThat might be relevant, but it's a completely different argument than you initially provided.
- yellowapple 8y agoMaybe the right answer here is to cook (or otherwise sterilize) our food before we eat it, or else accept that not doing so is risky? The prevalence of contagions in uncooked/undercooked meat is already well-known; uncooked/undercooked lettuce apparently warrants similar treatment. Sure, if it's easy and cheap to test and sterilize irrigation water, then let's do so. I strongly doubt that's the case, though, and requiring farms to do so is one of those regulations that would be a small dent in a large corporate farm's checkbook and a gaping hole in that of a small independent farm.
- rtkwe 8y agoYou can't really cook greens to sterilize them they'll just wilt and won't be the same food even.
- sp332 8y agoRestaurants have had similar problems with sprouts (like mung bean sprouts) and their solution largely has been to stop serving them. Except Jimmy Johns, which makes users click a button that confirms it's a health risk. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/raw-sprouts-at-jimmy-johns-linked-to-another-outbreak-at-least-the-7th/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/raw-sprouts-at-jimmy...
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoI've eaten bean sprouts cooked on the street in dubious conditions in various Asian countries and never contracted anything as a result. The risk to health must be vanishingly small.
- sp332 8y agoThis is about raw bean sprouts.
- yellowapple 8y agoYou can say the same thing about meat (especially fish). I love me some good nigiri or sashimi. I also know full well that by eating nigiri or sashimi instead of, say, a cooked filet, I'm increasing my risk of contracting food-borne illnesses.
- skybrian 8y agoYou can't test your way to safety. Here's a thread from a real expert: "All a sample can tell you is that one sample, from that place, on that day, was clean." "A lot of water contamination events are very temporary: a rainstorm washes manure into a well or canal, and then it's gone within a day or two. Testing only catches that if you target your testing program for it. Guarantee you most farms aren't doing that; they test on schedule." https://mobile.twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1067096098194550784 https://mobile.twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/10670960981...
- karmelapple 8y agoIs there an engineering solution for this, or is it something beyond that? For instance, could we have almost everything that pushes water to plants contain some kind of low-cost sensor that sends data about the water going through it back to some base station for analysis? We would need to spend some money to: * develop the technology * deploy the technology, including ensuring either the sensor can be self-powered (solar?) or we can hook up electricity to the water outputs easily (and electricity + water = not an easy solution!) * monitor the data However... all of this seems do-able if we want to reduce health problems like this. I imagine, like most everything, it comes down to tradeoffs: how frequently do outbreaks like these happen? What is the monetary cost when they happen? Would constant monitoring tech like this actually help us detect it? Who would pay? I'd argue this is exactly what something like the FDA should be helping with - ensuring our food is safe, and that means helping deploy state-of-the-art sensors to reduce the chance of contamination. With government money going to some group that can make this a reality, the risk of developing this on their own and hoping that food producers would choose to pay for it goes away.
- skybrian 8y agoI don't know but I'd recommend reading Sarah Taber's Twitter feed to get a better feel for what's likely to work.
- milesokeefe 8y agoLink to thread: https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1067096097171099650 https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/106709609717109965...
- ajoy 8y agoMaybe consumers can rise up to demand the change if the government doesn't. Boycott all growers who do not test their waters. If one farm can start testing and do marketing around that and consumers show a preference, the rest will follow.
- turc1656 8y agoHow could you ever do that realistically? You can't consistently know which farm/grower the produce came from. Sure, sometimes it is labeled. But a lot of times it is not. Or a brand buys multiple farms and uses their combined output to create their brand name that they put forward to the world. The only case I see is when a grower has their stuff labeled or has the end-supplier label it and it is never combined with any branding with other growers. You also have no control over what any business buys and it would be virtually impossible to find out. You'd never know, for example, where the Romaine used at your local Chipotle was purchased. I also think you're giving way too much credit to human beings if you think they care enough to take action on this and boycott over this (even if they had full information that was easily available). They didn't even demand that the US government stop spying on them and jail the perpetrators within the CIA after the Snowden incident and after an investigative panel during Obama's administration acknowledged that the acts committed by the CIA's PRISM program were illegal.
- ajoy 8y agoI wouldn't draw the parallel to the spying. Thats not something ordinary people have direct control over. What I am suggesting is to make the change by determining where your dollar is spent. A consumer has direct control over that dollar. Eg. "Organic" food. Consumers have shown a preference for it and that has led to more supply of "Organic" food. (I put it in quotes, since its sometimes questionable how organic it really is) But you are right, it's hard to track down individual suppliers/farms/grower. Maybe blockchain does have a use-case!
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoWe have very thorough food traceability laws in the EU (I develop software in this area). No blockchain required.
- redleggedfrog 8y agoSolution is easy: Once the outbreak is traced back to a particular farm, let them be sued. See how long they don't test.
- ThrowawayIP 8y agoWhy not actually solve the problem? Ban animal agriculture within the watersheds of produce growers.
- redleggedfrog 8y agoHmm, I think I could get behind that as well.
- jryan49 8y agoSo then we can add the of the cost of health care, on top of the legal cost, and not to mention time wasted of all those involved. Sounds great! It's probably better to come up with an effective regulation if possible. Also it seems the farms being affected are actually literally being shit on by other farms and it's not even them in the first place.
- ElijahLynn 8y agoJust so everyone knows this is an option: Veganic Farming/Gardening > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_organic_gardening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_organic_gardening, which doesn't involve the animal products that usually cause E. coli.
- noobiemcfoob 8y agoIsn't the issue here waste entering the water supply from upstream animal farms? Unless everything went 100% vegan (please don't take that bait), you can have the best processes you want on a given farm and still be at risk.
- aaron695 8y agoI hope we all understand here how big corp is keeping us safe. There's no way little farmers could afford to do all the tests and standardise this stuff. I always laugh when people think mega farms and mega food outlets are not orders of magnitude safer than many smaller operations.