Please Eat Your Spinach

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Shoppers visiting the Food Emporium on 48th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan on Oct. 3 didn't even need to visit the produce department to be warned about spinach. A printout taped to the front door alerted consumers to the E. coli outbreak, and said that the store would not be carrying any fresh spinach for the time being.



While the Food & Drug Administration lifted its widespread warning on spinach on Sept. 29, the Food Emporium and stores like it have yet to restock the dark leafy green. And while spinach is expected to return to stores this week, growers and packagers will be fighting a battle to win back consumers.



Key to the effort are moves by many spinach companies to distance themselves from the central California farms where the E. coli infection originated. Most packagers will affix stickers to salad bags stating the spinach's place of origin. Smaller spinach-growing states like New Jersey have launched ad campaigns to tout their local greens. Meanwhile many, if not all, of the brands implicated in the scare will be removing spinach altogether from their salad mixes for the near future, and plan to affix large "NO SPINACH" stickers to their premixed salads.



NEAR-SHUTDOWN.

It's the first week of recovery after a depressing two weeks for spinach farmers, who sell nearly $107 million worth of spinach every year, according to the U.S. Agriculture Dept. When a patient was hospitalized with an E. coli infection after eating from a package of Dole Baby spinach, the FDA advised the public to avoid consumption of any fresh spinach until it could lock down the origin of the outbreak and its cause. Spinach growers saw a near-shutdown in sales.



Over the next two weeks, 187 cases of E. coli infection were reported to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention [CDC] in 26 states, including 97 hospitalizations and one death. Meanwhile five companies, each owning several brands of bagged greens, initiated recalls, and many supermarkets removed spinach from the produce aisles completely.



On Sept. 29, the FDA concluded that the outbreak came from Natural Selection Foods, a San Juan Bautista [Calif.]-based company that packages fresh salads for Dole and many other brands, though the government agency said it still could not say with certainty which farm the produce originated from, or what the cause of the contamination was. Dole did not immediately return calls for comment.



Following the recall, Natural Selection Foods removed spinach from all of its salad mixes. Now it plans to ship the mixes without spinach for the near future, until it is able to procure spinach from a source in California it is confident is safe -- or from Yuma, Ariz., when the growing season there starts in November, says Samantha Cabaluna, a company spokeswoman. It will be implementing a full review of its safety programs, and initiating rigorous new safety measures from seed planting to the harvest stage, she says.



GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

. Trader Joe's, a national grocery chain that used Natural Selection Foods' spinach in its own brand of salad mixes, has changed its spinach vendor and will instead get most of its spinach from Southern California [San Juan Bautista is in the northern half of the state] and Canada. The mixes, which will return to store shelves this week, will be marked with stickers declaring the origin of the greens, according to a company statement.



The scare turned out to be a peculiar marketing opportunity for smaller growers from spinach-producing states like Colorado, Maryland, and New Jersey. Typically these states are dwarfed by California and Arizona, which produce 74% and 15% of the total U.S. fresh spinach crop, respectively. The departments of agriculture from all three states put out announcements clarifying that their own spinach was safe for consumption, and encouraging state residents to buy from local growers.



After the FDA pegged the source of the contamination to California, clearing other growers, the state of New Jersey launched an impromptu $25,000 advertising campaign last week to encourage residents in New Jersey and nearby parts of Pennsylvania to buy local. "I'm New Jersey Secretary of Agriculture Charlie Kuperus, with good news for those of you who love the great taste of Jersey-fresh spinach," started one radio ad. "The FDA has declared fresh spinach grown in the Garden State safe to eat for you and your family."



One Maryland farmer, Brennan Starkey, downplayed the advantage of differentiating his crop from California's, but he did say it's an opportunity for consumers to reconsider the darker, "more crinkly" variety of spinach that grows in Maryland. Over the past few years it has lost ground to California's increasingly fashionable baby spinach, which has flat leaves and works much better in salads. "Ours is pretty nice sauteed," says Starkey, who supplies spinach to several East Coast brands. With a recall on raw California spinach, people might give it a new try, he says.



INCREASED AWARENESS.

On a national level, the major produce associations are biding their time before attacking the problem. The scare will necessitate an aggressive public response, says Kathy Means, spokesperson for the Produce Marketing Assn., but because the FDA still hasn't been able to nail down the exact cause of the contamination, groups like the PMA will need to wait so that they respond appropriately. "Did this happen because someone wasn't following an existing food safety program? Or did it happen because we don't have the right programs in place?" says Means. "We need to find and fix the problem. This is not something a PR slogan is going to fix right now."



While spinach producers and the FDA continue to try to find the source of the E. coli outbreak, at least one shopper in the Food Emporium on Eighth Avenue was eager to get back eating. Debra James, a 50-year-old makeup artist from Manhattan, said that she would be paying attention to where spinach was grown from now on. But it wouldn't stop her from buying it in the future. "That can happen in any type of bagged vegetable, regrettably," says James. "But I'm going with the belief that the FDA did do their job here, and that if it's back on shelves, they've taken charge and dealt with it correctly."