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ok im having a serious moment here.
i hauled fresh produce local for many years, and much of it came from ca. i delivered to all the major grocery chains and many mom and pops.
i also delivered to many of the fresh roadside produce stands.
things really are not what they seem in the produce buisness.
i could easily write a book on the coruption in this industry.
yes, there was a contaminated shipment. yes people got really sick. yes a person died. yes i feel really sorry for the family of that person.
but the reality is the difference between this instance and any other is that the media has dramatized this one. this is far from being the first time this has happened. and it will be far from the last time. these instances are usually quitely taken care of and all bad publicity avoided, because news like this can cripple whole farming communitys, and cost millions and millions in lost revenue.
i need to point out two things here.
1. produce grows in dirt, there is always bacteria in the dirt. no matter how hard the farmer trys to clean a crop, it will always have some residue of naturally occuring bacteria.
if youve ever known anyone who works in a produce warehouse, ask them about the respitory problems they get every year because of the airborn spores.
2. from the second produce is harvested, it begins to rot. everyone in the produce industry is in a mad race to get it to you before it becomes too rotten. which means"fresh produce" is nothing but a marketing term to make you think its all good. enless you picked it yourself, washed it imediatly and then ate it within minutes of harvest, its not fresh!! most produce you buy in the store is at least a week old. some items can be months old by time you buy them. have you ever wondered how you can buy fresh apples in july and august?
having said that, there are several items that really give produce people a hard time. spinach is one of them. almost all berrys are another. it decays really fast, and must be moved quickly or lost. there are cases where whole loads came straight from the fields to wisconsin only to be rejected here because they didnt have enough shelf life left. i used to love it when fresh spinach was rejected. i would fill my fridge with the stuff, and just gourge on it for days. i love the stuff. i could get away with it because in many cases it was heading for a dumpster anyways. no time to resale.
in the majority of these cases it was prepackaged spinach.
i dont want to ramble on about this,and its late. so i would like to point out something before i go to bed.
the valley where the contamination occured is huge, it stretches for miles and miles, and is the biggest produce production area in the country by volume. do you really believe that a backed up sewer contaminated thousands of acres of produce? and why only the spinach? that valley is full of other crops as well. experience tells me the sewer story is a cover up. based apon past contaminations from that area, i think it will eventually come out that the spinach in question actually came from mexico, and is falsly labeled as grown in american. believe me it happens alot and sometimes ceo's go to prison for it.
so my suggestion is this. there are growers closer to home that are not part of the contaminated area, they often sell bunched spinach rather then the mass produced bagged. i know there is a large producer in ill just southwest of chicago for instance. wash it well and enjoy.
ps. this would be a very good time for someone in the sand countys to concider growing spinach. theres a lot of market share to be had in next year or so as this thing blows over.the major players in the spinach market are crippled and it will take time to regain consummer confidence.
and they will,
people forget quickly.
dont believe me? then why were these people eating spinach from ca in the first place? dont they remember the reports coming out of the valley a few years ago about the river supplying the valley being contaminated.?.
the whole valley is contaminated with heavy metals and pesticides from the water supply. but yet they still ate the spinach..
heck i still eat the spinach, because if i got paranoid from everything ive seen, i would starve.
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