CUESA: Food Safety in Biodiversity; CAFOs are contamination source

[Guest guest]

We all want food free of mercury, salmonella, and E. coli. But is

food safety just about the absence of contaminants?

For Jo Ann Baumgartner of the Wild Farm Alliance, true food safety

starts with biodiversity, or the cultivation of a wide variety of

life forms in every farm ecosystem.

A safe food system requires attention to every level, from

production to food service. Whereas the current crisis around

salmonella in peanut butter is drawing attention to the importance

of sanitation at food processing facilities, the 2006 outbreak of E.

coli in bagged spinach pointed a finger at raw produce and the farms

that grow it. And while cleaning up large-scale food processing may

improve safety, sterilizing farmland — or removing it of all life

but the food crop — has in fact caused a great deal of controversy.

Baumgartner's organization has been documenting the fallout of this

strategy and its impact on farms. Unfortunately, she says, measures

to make California agriculture safe in the short term could mean

much less actual safety in the long run.

" Farmers are being forced to implement misguided requirements, " says

Baumgartner. " It's not based on science and it is really harming

wildlife and the environment, " she adds.

In response to the spinach contamination, farms that want to sell

salad greens on a medium or large scale are being asked to comply

with standards established by handlers and shippers. These standards

require measures such as creating bare ground buffers at the edge of

fields, the removal of hedgerows, and the addition of fences that

block established wildlife corridors. In addition to removing

habitat, many farmers are also trapping and poisoning wildlife.

Baumgartner points to a 2007 grower survey conducted by the Monterey

Country Resource Conservation District; 89% of the farmers who

responded said they were taking some kind of measure to remove or

fence out wildlife. Wild Farm Alliance also recently flew over the

Central Valley with the help of volunteer pilots through LightHawk

and found that over a mile of riparian trees had been cut down,

among other things.

iodiversity on the farm can actually help improve safety in a number

of ways. Hedgerows and native grasses are home to beneficial

insects, which can significantly reduce problem pests in crops and

do away with the need for pesticides, and thus keep chemical residue

out of our food. Native pollinators also make their home in

hedgerows and wild areas. But that's not where it ends; grasses and

wetlands also act as filters, removing pathogens that may appear on

farms near industrial scale livestock operations, where the cows are

the most significant carrier of E. coli. According to a recent Wild

Farm Alliance report, " just one meter of grass can filter E. coli

from cow feces during a rainstorm. "

Baumgartner thinks the focus on eliminating vegetation and wildlife

from farms not only removes an important safeguard, it also ignores

what she believes is the source of the contamination: confined

animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Oddly, not much has been reported in the media about the potential

links between CAFOs and E. coli. The extreme concentration in these

facilities and the practice of feeding cows sub-therapeutic

antibiotics make CAFOs a significant risk. Meanwhile, attention has

instead been focused on animals such as deer, which, Baumgartner

says, have only been shown to be carriers of the bacteria 1-2% of

the time.

What can the average eater do? Buying salad mix directly from

farmers — and bypassing the need for middle men like handlers and

shippers — is an importantstart. That way, says Baumgartner, " you

know your greens haven't gone to a huge processing plant where

they've been washed with a million other pounds of salad mix. "

What's more, this choice also means the freshest produce.

It might be equally important, however, for sustainability-minded

eaters to help shift the idea that a dichotomy must exist between

our wilderness and farmlands. Just thinking and talking about the

link between biodiversity and food safety can make an impact.

" Do we want to confine diversity to pristine national park areas and

sterilize our farm land? " Baumgartner asks. " I would say no.

Instead, farms can be a buffer between developed areas and rural

wild areas and benefit from the diversity that creates. "

http://www.wildfarmalliance.org/resources/BDBrochure.pdf

http://www.cuesa.org/cuesa/e-letter/archives/