Someone explain to me why it's so hard to find the source of E-Coli(Spinach) outbreaks...

[FreshPrince]

The government is telling us that it may be near impossible to find the source of the outbreaks, but why?

I see this as:

1. farm grows spinach
2. farm bags crop with bar coded serial numbered bags.
3. Bags are sold to grocery stores or restaurants with the serial numbers scanned and tracked.
4. Grocery stores/restaurants distribute bags from central distribution centers to local stores and their database systems track the serial numbers.
5. Grocery stores sell bag to customer, again tracking the serial numbers.

I know this is a very simple breakdown of the whole order fulfillment process, but why is it so hard to track the source? Unless the farms don't do any tracking with the serial numbers... If that's the case, the government really needs to step in and regulate the entire food industry to ensure such compliancy. You would think such laws would already exist after all the E-Coli incidents with beef....

 

[TuxDave]

So what if several farms are affected. Then the source is what connects them all together. Maybe the fertilizer has e-coli. Maybe the cows that make the fertilizer produce e-coli via evolution. Maybe these cows eat grass that gets water from an e-coli generating water plant! :Q The possibilities* are endless!

* Note Probabilities of possibilities may be equal to zero.

 

[FreshPrince]

Originally posted by: TuxDave
So what if several farms are affected. Then the source is what connects them all together. Maybe the fertilizer has e-coli. Maybe the cows that make the fertilizer produce e-coli via evolution. Maybe these cows eat grass that gets water from an e-coli generating water plant! :Q The possibilities* are endless!

* Note Probabilities of possibilities may be equal to zero.

ok fine, I agree with that, but atleast you'd still have tracking and you can say that certain farms are not affected by the infection and therefore, you'd wouldn't cause the entire spinach industry to destroy it's entire crop and therefore cause them to have a 0 in profits and go in the red for expenses already invested to grow the existing crop. Studies have also said that all the bagged spinach tested so far do not have any infection so that just means once again, mass panic causes an industry billions.

 

[everman]

The problem is even if you know where the product came from, you don't know how or where along the line it actually became contaminated. You need to start testing all along the supply chain and hopefully find the source. It's possible that the source is gone or moved somewhere else too, so you may never find out.

 

[wheresmybacon]

what about the processing of the spinach? im no farmer, but i think you're leaving out a lot of stuff in between 1 and 2. just because it's raw doesn't mean all farms clean, bag, and sell their own stuff directly to the grocers.

therein lies the confusion

 

[getbush]

All I know is e. coli is everywhere. Escpecially feces. All fecal matter I'm pretty sure. A lot of the bugs taht infect us are carried as our own natural flora. We get an infection from them when they get into an area they aren't supposed to be. Somewhere along the line poop got on the spinach? I dunno. Seems like it would be really hard to track. Maybe some washing procedure wasn't thorough enough or hot enough and missed some.

 

[dullard]

Did you consider the many people claiming food poisoning from spinach that DIDN'T really have food poisioning? Suppose half of them made it up to get media attention (a common thing). Then half of the claims are for farms / processing factories / distribution centers / stores etc that are not contaminated.

It takes some time to sort the real ones from the false ones.

 

[BoomerD]

Because they haven't caught the illegal farmworker who keeps taking a dump in that particular field...OR, it could be from the "organic fertilizer" they used, OR...
The last I knew, they knew the general source of the spinach e-coli outbreak, just not which farm, or what actually caused it.

 

[batmang]

all i know is, i aint eating spinach.

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: FreshPrince
The government is telling us that it may be near impossible to find the source of the outbreaks, but why?

I see this as:

1. farm grows spinach
2. farm bags crop with bar coded serial numbered bags.
3. Bags are sold to grocery stores or restaurants with the serial numbers scanned and tracked.
4. Grocery stores/restaurants distribute bags from central distribution centers to local stores and their database systems track the serial numbers.
5. Grocery stores sell bag to customer, again tracking the serial numbers.

I know this is a very simple breakdown of the whole order fulfillment process, but why is it so hard to track the source? Unless the farms don't do any tracking with the serial numbers... If that's the case, the government really needs to step in and regulate the entire food industry to ensure such compliancy. You would think such laws would already exist after all the E-Coli incidents with beef....

1)yeap
2) nope farm does not use serial numbered bags. it is sold bulk to a plant who resales it to another who finally bags it.
3-5) yeap.

the problem is with #2. there are so many steps it is actually difficult to track. not to mention the spinach in the bag did not come from 1 farm. it may have spinach from a few different farms.

 

[BullsOnParade]

waggy and hungfar over are probably close. Several giant farms pick and combine the produce in a processing plant where it is all washed together and packaged.
Identifying which batch is the initial source of the contamination and what stage of the line from the field to the fork is the source of the contamination probably requires
cross company record searching which likely peters down to asking truck drivers QC technicians and handlers for their personal accounts in addition to batch testing.

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: batmang
all i know is, i aint eating spinach.

Funny, all the media attention made me hungry for creamed spinach! Too bad I can only get the canned and the frozen stuff right now, though... No way to make it fresh

 

[mattpegher]

The problem has got to be in the cleaning process. Plenty of E. coli would be on anything grown with untreated manure, but it had to be cleaned before processing. Alternatively the spinach could have been clean until it reached some part of the process and become recontaminated from the machinary. I agree that tracing the product may be confused due to false reports. Only intact packages could be used to trace the contamination.

 

[spidey07]

Have you ever messed with supply chain management/inventory trackings systems as they cross companies hands?

That's why it is so difficult.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Any bets that it all comes down to an "undocumented worker" not washing his/her hands?

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
Any bets that it all comes down to an "undocumented worker" not washing his/her hands?

While that's what I immediately thought, I've heard cow manure getting into the irrigation.

AFAIK, we have E-coli all over the place and in our bodies. It is the nasty strains that are dangerous.

 

[puffff]

good time to be a carnivore

 

[getbush]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
Any bets that it all comes down to an "undocumented worker" not washing his/her hands?

While that's what I immediately thought, I've heard cow manure getting into the irrigation.

AFAIK, we have E-coli all over the place and in our bodies. It is the nasty strains that are dangerous.

WEll it doesn't even really have to be nasty per se. It's when bugs that are normal in one area get somewhere they shouldn't you get infections. Noraml e. coli in our feces causes a large percentage of urinary tract infections in women, as an example.

 

[blakeatwork]

There's an e-coli from spinach scare?

What's next? Ebola from Turnips?