Hi! Dave, I understand that in each case it was salmonella. I do not understand how the build up came about. My information came from a talk by a BD/ Organic Inspector, who was pointing out that Organic is not necessarily healthy. His message was one of the need to practice care with matters such as minimizing soil to produce transfer of organisms. He said that in Australia, a disproportional high percentage of food poisoning is traced back to organic producers. While not advocating chemicals, he was calling for care.
Gil Dave Robison wrote: > Gil-- > I'm not a biologist but I don't fully understand the cases you described. > > >We have had two serious cases of bacterial poisoning that has been traced > >back to > >Organic growers. > > > >The first concerned orange juice made from a mixture of organic and > >conventional > >fruit. Many people were poisoned and a major national brand nearly ruined > >by it. > >When it was traced back to the grower, it was an organic grower, who was using > >irrigation in an area with almost no rainfall and thus the folia spray had not > >washed off the fruit when it was processed, resulting in the bacteria getting > >into the fresh juice. (The whole orange is crushed, so anything on the > >skin can > >be mixed in with the juice.) > > If there's no rain and presumably not fungal disease on the tree, why spray > a foliar application? Is it supposed to be foliar fertilizer? Is it > supposed to provide longer shelf life for the fruit? > What kind of bacteria would make people sick? Salmonella? E. coli? Were > these present in the compost? Or the tea? My expectation is that well made > compost should not have such bacteria present. Nor should properly aerobic tea. > > >The other was only a few days ago and from the early report it seems to be > >very > >high bacteria counts in salad vegetables. This occurred in a very up market > >establishment and may cause them to stop using organic product. > > What kind of bacteria? I can't imagine that there would be a problem unless > it was something like salmonella. Was such a bacteria coming from compost? > Or was it raw manure? As far as I know, the cases we had of dangerous E. > coli came from raw manure, in some cases from cows ranging in the orchard > and windfall fruit being harvested from the ground. > This is an important issue because the scare factor from these cases > resulted in the gov't developing completely unrealistic regulations > regarding compost turning etc. > > ========================== > Dave Robison
