4 ms·

FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

63 points by speckx 2mo ago

amanaplanacanal 2mo ago
I've been buying local produce, when I can. I signed up for a CSA share in the spring and get an assortment of fresh veggies every week. The same place does have a local farm stand, so you don't have to sign up for the whole summer if you just want to buy some veggies. There are a couple of "Saturday market" type things in my town, where people have booths selling produce also, but from what I can see there is no requirement that they grow their own produce, and I suspect they just buy from SYSCO or wherever. They always have things that aren't in season where I live.
- smerrill2 2mo ago
  I had this exact same epiphany when going to one of my local "farmers markets" last saturday. I noticed a suspicious amount of vegetables that should've died during the last few weeks of this spiraling heat and they were all perfectly green. It made me suspicious and I found myself thinking about bylaws for farmers markets. I don't think there are any; so I'm sure there is nothing stopping vendors from just reselling sysco products for "organic" labeled, "locally-grown" products. Wish there was a feasible way of checking, for now I will continue to buy my goods from Whole Foods and Natural Groceries near me.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 2mo ago
    There’s some rather infamous examples I’ve seen recently of people unpacking grocery store bins at farmers markets. There is no provenance around the origin of the goods in most markets, more common of a problem than people might think. In Central Texas when peaches are in season people set up roadside stalls, but there’s no guarantee you are getting an actual local grown peach instead of whatever was on the shelf at the grocery store that day
    - eth0up 2mo ago
      Thankfully most of us have a provenance detector attached to our faces. If you've ever worked with freshly harvested produce, the aroma is, well... distinct, which most store-shelf products aren't. Not preferable, but a semi-reliable fallback. I find most in-store produce genuinely symbolic of the real thing. Makes me think the growth was due to coercion and mentalism. A palpable snapshot of reality, with a high price.
  - sonic45132 2mo ago
    In Florida there have been some articles talking about how some local farmers markets produce may actually be the rejected produce from the southern grocery chain Publix, rather than local growers selling directly. https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fable/farmers-markets/ https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fab...
    - nomel 2mo ago
      Where I am, all the farmers markets are full of produce marked with the local grocery chain, or boxes from mexican grocery chains. I suspect they all "fell off the truck", since there are exactly zero of these crops in this region.
  - QuercusMax 2mo ago
    [dead]
  - quietsegfault 2mo ago
    My local farmers market has different colored table cloths to indicate the source of the vegetables. I’m sure sure if or how it’s checked.
- NewLincoln 2mo ago
  We took our garden more seriously this year and we are totally overwhelmed with tomatoes and cucumbers. I planted potatoes for the first time this year and they are ready to go. Had a huge pea harvest earlier in the summer. Unfortunately it's been too hot for our lettuce. It's been fun planning meals around what we have (supplementing what we need from the store obviously)
  - jackyinger 2mo ago
    Congrats! Being overwhelmed with tomatoes and cucumbers sounds like a great opportunity to can tomatoes and pickle cucumbers.
- phil21 2mo ago
  Generally speaking, from having family who were organic market garden farmers who also did a few farmers markets stalls… Smaller markets tend to be better and more curated/policed by the organizers. This typically means you are driving to a smaller town on the outskirts of a larger urban area. If you are an infrequent buyer this is probably your best bet, plus just the eyeball test. If you are a weekly shopper, it’s a bit easier to sus out reliably even for the larger markets. Find booths that have the same people staffing them most of the time, who can speak to the product. Look for “ugly” produce - the stuff that looks like it’s made for display at Whole Foods is almost always going to be commercially grown since those varieties are for aesthetics vs. taste. And of course look for booths that generally tend to only have stuff that is in season. Their product mix should shift throughout the growing season in most places. The latter can by a tiny bit tricky since some local farms are going to have hoop houses and even greenhouses for a few different kinds of veggies. The hoop houses especially are used in part to “time shift” the growing season so as to take advantage of a market where you are a few weeks early or late compared to competitors. Certainly not perfect but most of the time it’s immediately obvious to me which booths are obviously simply reselling. I’m sure some operations can fake it a bit better, but I would be surprised if I was wrong very often on false positives.
nothercastle 2mo ago
FDA has failed. We’re going to need you start to look up Costco and Walmart or local organic cart body’s to regulate because the FDA can’t.
- add-sub-mul-div 2mo ago
  Let's remember, though, not to fall into the trap of thinking that its current incompetence is intrinsic.
  - han-tyumi 2mo ago
    Playbook: anti-regulation entities capture government, strip down regulators, and when disaster ensues, point to regulators' inability to prevent or address issues as an argument to further scale down the watchdog's power.
    - andrekandre 2mo ago
      its definitely the playbook: screw up the govt then make the point that cant do anything right
- solid_fuel 2mo ago
  It was fine for decades, I wonder what changed. Maybe the republicans did something stupid like putting a bunch of incompetent jackasses in charge.
  - armitron 2mo ago
    It wasn't fine for decades. Both democrats and republicans allowed regulatory capture to take place.
    - solid_fuel 2mo ago
      Oh yes of course, both sides. That's why there were huge cyclospora outbreaks in 2022. Because of the Democrats.
m3047 2mo ago
TLDR: nobody is testing irrigation water for cyclospora, it's a blind spot.
jjk166 2mo ago
TFA could really benefit from a concise thesis statement. It jumps around randomly and repeats facts that don't appear to be building a strong case for anything specific. Reading between the lines, it seems like the author believes the guidance document should include more on supply chain water testing, but I don't have enough context to know what reason they think it was not included or why they consider that reasoning to be flawed.
- cwillu 2mo ago
  The article appears to be trying to smuggle in a notion of “the organism cannot be killed in water” via a path of indirectly repeating the reference that the water cannot kill the organism in the food; because the chemical treatment of the water is therefore insufficient to avoid cross contamination, testing becomes an absolute requirement. I get real suspicious of ulterior motives whenever such equivocation makes a prominent appearance in an argument.
  - ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
    Sanitizing water won't kill it? Not chlorination? What is cyclospora, anyway? It is not a bacterium or thing that I am familiar with. It is parasitic; it is a eukaryote; beyond those two definitions, it might as well be an alien from Venus because I'm not familiar. How does it get into produce? Does it seep inside from irrigation? Fall on it in droplets? Grow inside the vegetables, waiting for human host? Where does it come from? Just how do you protect from it and mitigate it? By the way, chopped salads and processed produce isn't typically washed at the destination. It's not a good thing to wash a salad you're just about ready to eat. Once I grabbed a "salad spinner" gadget at the thrift store that was supposed to spin the moisture out of a large volume of salad, but if food service set about washing their already-shredded lettuce, we'd have soggy yucky tacos. Taylor Farms is a very big player in the produce market. Every salad kit I've ever bought has been either Taylor Farms or a store-brand, and I'd wager most of those store-brands are simply Taylor Farms in disguise. To know they were supplying Taco Bell and other food service... they must be real big. I picked up salad kits at Target. They say Salinas. I believe they are non-Taylor. But there was plenty of Taylor Farm product on the shelves as well, also professing a Salinas origin. I would suppose that we are still dealing with a chiefly Mexican outbreak, and that Salinas, CA is safe for now?
matthew_wilson 2mo ago
Apologies if this was in a prior thread but detection and washing are irrelevant when the parasite is dead. How Food Irradiation Works https://www.cdc.gov/radiation-health/food-irradiation/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/radiation-health/food-irradiation/index.... https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publication/?seqNo115=127129 https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publication/?...
- KetoManx64 2mo ago
  > The process is safe and effective. What interesting phrasing.
- hattmall 2mo ago
  Irradiating enough to kill cyclospora oocysts would ruin the lettuce though.
  - NetMageSCW 2mo ago
    It seems the studies that have been done indicate pretty high dosages required for noticeable damage to occur and that even then it can be minimized with packaging changes and care: https://staging.billmarler.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-commercial-irradiation-of-fresh-iceberg-lettuce-and-fresh-spinach-a-literature-review-part-iii-food-quality https://staging.billmarler.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-commerc... At the 1.0 kGy level required to effect Cyclospora, little difference was noticed in lettuce packaged in MAP instead of air, but some browning in air.
  - euroderf 2mo ago
    Food irradiation is a topic with depth. Spices are irradiated like crazy because there's no nutrition to nuke and they are insect fodder. Irradiation can be a continuum across food types. I'll bet a heavily nuked Pringle is indistinguishable from an unnuked Pringle except perhaps for improved phosphorescence.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2mo ago
  There is 'cold plasma': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonthermal_plasma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonthermal_plasma

63 points by speckx 2mo ago

I've been buying local produce, when I can. I signed up for a CSA share in the spring and get an assortment of fresh veggies every week. The same place does have a local farm stand, so you don't have to sign up for the whole summer if you just want to buy some veggies. There are a couple of "Saturday market" type things in my town, where people have booths selling produce also, but from what I can see there is no requirement that they grow their own produce, and I suspect they just buy from SYSCO or wherever. They always have things that aren't in season where I live.

smerrill2 2mo ago
I had this exact same epiphany when going to one of my local "farmers markets" last saturday. I noticed a suspicious amount of vegetables that should've died during the last few weeks of this spiraling heat and they were all perfectly green. It made me suspicious and I found myself thinking about bylaws for farmers markets. I don't think there are any; so I'm sure there is nothing stopping vendors from just reselling sysco products for "organic" labeled, "locally-grown" products. Wish there was a feasible way of checking, for now I will continue to buy my goods from Whole Foods and Natural Groceries near me.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2mo ago
  There’s some rather infamous examples I’ve seen recently of people unpacking grocery store bins at farmers markets. There is no provenance around the origin of the goods in most markets, more common of a problem than people might think. In Central Texas when peaches are in season people set up roadside stalls, but there’s no guarantee you are getting an actual local grown peach instead of whatever was on the shelf at the grocery store that day
  - eth0up 2mo ago
    Thankfully most of us have a provenance detector attached to our faces. If you've ever worked with freshly harvested produce, the aroma is, well... distinct, which most store-shelf products aren't. Not preferable, but a semi-reliable fallback. I find most in-store produce genuinely symbolic of the real thing. Makes me think the growth was due to coercion and mentalism. A palpable snapshot of reality, with a high price.
- sonic45132 2mo ago
  In Florida there have been some articles talking about how some local farmers markets produce may actually be the rejected produce from the southern grocery chain Publix, rather than local growers selling directly. https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fable/farmers-markets/ https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fab...
  - nomel 2mo ago
    Where I am, all the farmers markets are full of produce marked with the local grocery chain, or boxes from mexican grocery chains. I suspect they all "fell off the truck", since there are exactly zero of these crops in this region.
- QuercusMax 2mo ago
  [dead]
- quietsegfault 2mo ago
  My local farmers market has different colored table cloths to indicate the source of the vegetables. I’m sure sure if or how it’s checked.
NewLincoln 2mo ago
We took our garden more seriously this year and we are totally overwhelmed with tomatoes and cucumbers. I planted potatoes for the first time this year and they are ready to go. Had a huge pea harvest earlier in the summer. Unfortunately it's been too hot for our lettuce. It's been fun planning meals around what we have (supplementing what we need from the store obviously)
- jackyinger 2mo ago
  Congrats! Being overwhelmed with tomatoes and cucumbers sounds like a great opportunity to can tomatoes and pickle cucumbers.
phil21 2mo ago
Generally speaking, from having family who were organic market garden farmers who also did a few farmers markets stalls… Smaller markets tend to be better and more curated/policed by the organizers. This typically means you are driving to a smaller town on the outskirts of a larger urban area. If you are an infrequent buyer this is probably your best bet, plus just the eyeball test. If you are a weekly shopper, it’s a bit easier to sus out reliably even for the larger markets. Find booths that have the same people staffing them most of the time, who can speak to the product. Look for “ugly” produce - the stuff that looks like it’s made for display at Whole Foods is almost always going to be commercially grown since those varieties are for aesthetics vs. taste. And of course look for booths that generally tend to only have stuff that is in season. Their product mix should shift throughout the growing season in most places. The latter can by a tiny bit tricky since some local farms are going to have hoop houses and even greenhouses for a few different kinds of veggies. The hoop houses especially are used in part to “time shift” the growing season so as to take advantage of a market where you are a few weeks early or late compared to competitors. Certainly not perfect but most of the time it’s immediately obvious to me which booths are obviously simply reselling. I’m sure some operations can fake it a bit better, but I would be surprised if I was wrong very often on false positives.

nothercastle 2mo ago

FDA has failed. We’re going to need you start to look up Costco and Walmart or local organic cart body’s to regulate because the FDA can’t.

add-sub-mul-div 2mo ago
Let's remember, though, not to fall into the trap of thinking that its current incompetence is intrinsic.
- han-tyumi 2mo ago
  Playbook: anti-regulation entities capture government, strip down regulators, and when disaster ensues, point to regulators' inability to prevent or address issues as an argument to further scale down the watchdog's power.
  - andrekandre 2mo ago
    its definitely the playbook: screw up the govt then make the point that cant do anything right
solid_fuel 2mo ago
It was fine for decades, I wonder what changed. Maybe the republicans did something stupid like putting a bunch of incompetent jackasses in charge.
- armitron 2mo ago
  It wasn't fine for decades. Both democrats and republicans allowed regulatory capture to take place.
  - solid_fuel 2mo ago
    Oh yes of course, both sides. That's why there were huge cyclospora outbreaks in 2022. Because of the Democrats.

m3047 2mo ago

TLDR: nobody is testing irrigation water for cyclospora, it's a blind spot.

jjk166 2mo ago

TFA could really benefit from a concise thesis statement. It jumps around randomly and repeats facts that don't appear to be building a strong case for anything specific. Reading between the lines, it seems like the author believes the guidance document should include more on supply chain water testing, but I don't have enough context to know what reason they think it was not included or why they consider that reasoning to be flawed.

cwillu 2mo ago
The article appears to be trying to smuggle in a notion of “the organism cannot be killed in water” via a path of indirectly repeating the reference that the water cannot kill the organism in the food; because the chemical treatment of the water is therefore insufficient to avoid cross contamination, testing becomes an absolute requirement. I get real suspicious of ulterior motives whenever such equivocation makes a prominent appearance in an argument.
- ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
  Sanitizing water won't kill it? Not chlorination? What is cyclospora, anyway? It is not a bacterium or thing that I am familiar with. It is parasitic; it is a eukaryote; beyond those two definitions, it might as well be an alien from Venus because I'm not familiar. How does it get into produce? Does it seep inside from irrigation? Fall on it in droplets? Grow inside the vegetables, waiting for human host? Where does it come from? Just how do you protect from it and mitigate it? By the way, chopped salads and processed produce isn't typically washed at the destination. It's not a good thing to wash a salad you're just about ready to eat. Once I grabbed a "salad spinner" gadget at the thrift store that was supposed to spin the moisture out of a large volume of salad, but if food service set about washing their already-shredded lettuce, we'd have soggy yucky tacos. Taylor Farms is a very big player in the produce market. Every salad kit I've ever bought has been either Taylor Farms or a store-brand, and I'd wager most of those store-brands are simply Taylor Farms in disguise. To know they were supplying Taco Bell and other food service... they must be real big. I picked up salad kits at Target. They say Salinas. I believe they are non-Taylor. But there was plenty of Taylor Farm product on the shelves as well, also professing a Salinas origin. I would suppose that we are still dealing with a chiefly Mexican outbreak, and that Salinas, CA is safe for now?

matthew_wilson 2mo ago

Apologies if this was in a prior thread but detection and washing are irrelevant when the parasite is dead. How Food Irradiation Works https://www.cdc.gov/radiation-health/food-irradiation/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/radiation-health/food-irradiation/index.... https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publication/?seqNo115=127129 https://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publication/?...

KetoManx64 2mo ago
> The process is safe and effective. What interesting phrasing.
hattmall 2mo ago
Irradiating enough to kill cyclospora oocysts would ruin the lettuce though.
- NetMageSCW 2mo ago
  It seems the studies that have been done indicate pretty high dosages required for noticeable damage to occur and that even then it can be minimized with packaging changes and care: https://staging.billmarler.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-commercial-irradiation-of-fresh-iceberg-lettuce-and-fresh-spinach-a-literature-review-part-iii-food-quality https://staging.billmarler.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-commerc... At the 1.0 kGy level required to effect Cyclospora, little difference was noticed in lettuce packaged in MAP instead of air, but some browning in air.
- euroderf 2mo ago
  Food irradiation is a topic with depth. Spices are irradiated like crazy because there's no nutrition to nuke and they are insect fodder. Irradiation can be a continuum across food types. I'll bet a heavily nuked Pringle is indistinguishable from an unnuked Pringle except perhaps for improved phosphorescence.
LargoLasskhyfv 2mo ago
There is 'cold plasma': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonthermal_plasma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonthermal_plasma