First california, thenthe nation: Leafy greens safety program serves as national model

摘要

On the outskirts of Hollister, Calif., manager Mark Wright drives past a lush spinach field, studying the still dewy leaves. Making his morning rounds, he's deciding on the optimum time for harvest. Rewind to September 2006, and Wright recalls that this same spinach field was being disked under because an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak had been traced to spinach fields in San Benito County. At the time, FDA cautioned consumers to avoid all fresh spinach and the market collapsed. He plowed under as many as4 million pounds of harvest-ready spinach.