New Food Safety Rules May Do More Harm Than Good
By Jason Mark, Earth Island Journal.
Dale Coke has been farming in California's San Benito County for nearly 30 years, and the thousands of days of wind and sun are etched in the deep lines of his long, lean face. His hands are tough, with fingers that are as adept at fixing a broken water pump as they are at handling a freshly cut head of lettuce. Coke, 54 with salt-and-pepper hair, was one of the pioneers of the organic farming industry. In 1980, he started growing salad mix in the valleys of California's Central Coast, and by the end of the 1990s he had nearly 500 acres under cultivation. But then the salad mix market "got too complicated," he says, and so he downsized to 250 acres, and today focuses on specialty crops such as fennel, dinosaur kale, and beets, which he sells to Whole Foods and restaurants.

When talking about the economics of organic farming, a joker's grin flirts with the edges of Coke's mouth, as if he knows the punch line to some inside joke about a business he has seen transform from a mom-and-pop enterprise to a multibillion dollar industry that is the fastest growing segment of the food market. But for Coke, recent changes in the fresh produce industry are nothing to laugh about. A year and a half after an E. coli outbreak traced to bagged spinach killed three people, hospitalized 100, and sickened dozens more, farmers and processors are still struggling with how best to ensure food safety. According to Coke and other farmers, some of the new practices intended to improve food safety are misguided and misinformed, and risk undermining environmentally sound farming practices in the area surrounding California's Salinas Valley. The region produces more than half of the country's lettuce, and is affectionately referred to by locals as "The Nation's Salad Bowl."

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