Claire was about to start at college when her counsellor recommended that she should not tell anyone that she was being treated for drug dependence. So she spent months leaving class early and making up excuses to sneak to the chemist to collect her methadone prescription: lying to teachers, administrators and her friends. Eventually, the pressure of the constant evasions became too much and she dropped out of the course, rather than reveal her secret.
Claire’s story is far from unusual. As her treatment counsellor had recognised, suspicion, fear and distrust of people struggling with drug problems are widespread. The result is that people with drug dependence, and their families, are suffering in silence, missing opportunities for treatment, and prolonging the process of recovery.
Research by the
UK Drug Policy Commission(UKDPC found these attitudes to be widespread, affecting those with drug problems throughout their lives. We encountered people who felt trapped in their homes because of the hostility they faced from neighbours. Being stuck indoors, without social contacts or the opportunity to find work, may be one of the hardest settings imaginable in which to fight drug dependence.
Everyday prejudice creates a host of obstacles for recovering drug users. Offers of work or housing are commonly withdrawn when it becomes known that the recipient has had a serious drug problem, even if they have stopped using. Yet employment and stable accommodation are two of the most important factors for helping people overcome dependence and stay off drugs. Anything that makes these harder to access will worsen drug problems.
Public hostility can even make it harder for people with dependence problems to get the treatment they need to help rebuild their lives. The fear of being exposed as someone with a drug problem can deter them from going to a pharmacy to collect prescriptions for methadone, for example, which could provide the stability they need to stop using street drugs.
These attitudes are not just those of an uneducated general public. Our
researchfound that many people with drug problems experience similar barriers in their dealings with the professionals who should be helping them. Some find it impossible to convince doctors or nurses that they need help, even when they are in agonising pain or suffering from long-term conditions like Hepatitis C. The suspicion of the medics is often that their patient is just looking for drugs to relieve their cravings.
Others are made to wait at pharmacies for as long as it takes to serve every other customer in the store, including those who arrive after them. For recovering drug users, treatment can mean daily visits to pharmacies. Such long waits can make it impossible for them to be reliable in keeping other appointments, such as work obligations or job interviews.
Disapproval
Such problems are not just faced by those still using drugs. Even after they have managed to overcome drug dependence, former drug users can face similar hostility and distrust. The negative attitudes they face go beyond simple disapproval. Disapproval is usually linked to a person’s behaviour, and so disappears when that behaviour changes. Social disapproval of drug use even has a useful role in dissuading some from engaging in potentially risky behaviour.
But perceptions of people with drug problems go far beyond this. They are seen as bearing a stigma, an enduring mark that defines them and which cannot be removed by their stopping using street drugs. For many people with serious drug problems, suffering not only from a debilitating health condition, but also from social exclusion, the prospect of never being able to move past the label of drug user or addict can be one more barrier to overcoming their dependence.
The families of those with drug problems are also affected by this stigma. Such is the fear of being associated with the shame of addiction, that family members may avoid situations that could lead to their being identified as the relative of a drug user, even at risk to their own well-being.
In our research, we met Patricia, a mother who avoids contact with her old friends because she is afraid they will mention her son’s drug dependence. We also spoke to Tom, the brother of someone with a drug problem, who will not seek the support he needs himself because he is worried others will find out and would think less of him and his family.
Public opinion on dependence and recovery suggests that this worry is not misplaced. In one survey of public attitudes that UKDPC carried out, we found that, while people want top-quality help to be made available to those recovering from dependence, they are nevertheless suspicious and afraid of those who have had drug problems.
More than four in five agreed that people recovering from drug dependence should be part of the normal community. But the public still wants to keep its distance, with 43 per cent of those asked saying they would not want to live next door to someone who had been dependent on drugs. More than a third felt it would be foolish to get into a serious relationship with someone who had suffered from drug dependence, even if they appeared to be fully recovered.
Beating stigma
To a certain extent, these attitudes reflect how dependence is portrayed in the media. People with drug addictions tend to labelled as “junkies” not as people with a health problem that can be addressed. The term “addict” has itself become pejorative and frames the issue in a particularly negative way.
If a media story about a drug user is not about a celebrity, it is most likely to be about a criminal, who, for example, has mugged someone or broken into a house in order to pay for drugs. And if an article features someone who used to be dependent on drugs but is now drug free or on medication, their previous addiction is invariably mentioned, even when it has no relevance to the story. The implication is that no one can truly move on from dependence.
But if television and newspapers can perpetuate attitudes that make recovery more difficult, changes in how they report such stories could be similarly effective in making recovery more achievable. A forthcoming guide for journalists and editors, produced by the Society of Editors and UKDPC, will suggest ways to reframe news stories to avoid the assumption that drug dependence is a life sentence.
But media coverage cannot stray too far from where the public is. The stigma of drug dependence will only be overcome if it is acknowledged and confronted directly.
There is a parallel with attitudes to mental health. Public perceptions of those suffering with mental illness have shifted over recent years. Nonetheless, it is still less than a decade since the
Sun
newspaper
ran a front-page storyabout boxer Frank Bruno being taken to a psychiatric hospital under the headline “Bonkers Bruno locked up”. The editor belatedly realised this was out of step with British attitudes and later editions carried the headline “Sad Bruno in mental home”. Even today, the
Time to Change campaign “Get Talking”, which aims to encourage debate about mental health, demonstrates that shifting these views takes a lot of work over a long period.
Attitudes to those who suffer from drug dependence may lag behind perceptions of other stigmatised groups. But the process has begun. Earlier this year, the Duchess of Cambridge became a patron of the charity
Action on Addiction and said specifically that she wanted to
break the stigma associated with addiction, as Princess Diana had done with Aids.
UKDPC, along with other organisations, is working on a project to determine practical measures, such as the media guide, that can make recovery and inclusion achievable for everyone.
* Names have been changed
In this country we take for the granted that, in theory at least, everyone is equal in the eyes of the law and that the law applies irrespective of colour or creed.
But the Northern Territory intervention has undermined that fundamental proposition and in doing so created a dangerous precedent.
Next week the Federal Parliament will debate legislation to extend the Howard government's controversial 2007 intervention. The Stronger Futures legislation has been championed by Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin.
It continues the punitive and paternalist approach of the Howard government's original laws in this area. And it creates a suite of criminal and regulatory offences which will apply only to Indigenous people and not to those Australians who live outside the Northern Territory.
The proposed laws make it an offence to bring liquor into an "alcohol protected area" or to consume or possess alcohol in such an area. A person who is convicted of this offence can face a fine of up to $1,000 or up to six months jail. Then there are what are termed alcohol management plans which regulate how, when and who can consume alcohol in particular areas.
The other major issue dealt with by the Stronger Futures Bill is that of food security. There is an elaborate set of rules created which have attached to them civil penalties for non-compliance. So called community stores are established by the proposed laws and you need a licence to run such a store. Failure to have one attracts a civil penalty of $500. Licences to operate community stores can carry with them a range of conditions including that the store has a sufficiently diverse range of healthy foods, that it has good retail practices and that it promotes good nutrition and healthy products. If the Commonwealth thinks you are not doing any or all of those things you can get pinged a civil penalty of $200 for each breach of the condition.
Owners and operators of community stores have to hand over documents when a bureaucrat comes to "assess" the store. Failure to do so is a criminal offence with a fine of $600 attached to it. A more serious criminal offence carrying a penalty of $1,000 is the dangerously vaguely worded offence of failing to provide the assessor of the store "with such assistance and facilities as are necessary and reasonable for making the assessment".
The offences and regulatory obligations created by the Stronger Futures legislation are substantive and serious ones. They place Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory in a position where they must comply with laws that are not applicable to Australians living in Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania or anywhere else outside the areas of the Northern Territory where the Indigenous communities, the target of the five-year-old intervention, are located. In this sense then the application of laws are unequal in that they restrict the freedoms of one group of people based on their race, where they live and their socio-economic circumstances.
Ms Macklin and other politicians who are championing the Stronger Futures legislation and the intervention's reliance on criminal and regulatory legislation, which is specific to one group in our society, justify it as an appropriate response to a desperate situation. Alcohol and drug abuse, malnutrition and poor health are clearly evident in many Indigenous communities, but they also exist in low-income non-Indigenous communities around Australia, yet those communities are not being forced to live under the threat of jail terms, fines and civil penalties for failing to cooperate with government programs or for possessing alcohol.
The danger then with the Stronger Futures legislation is that the model will be used by other governments, federal and state, to curtail the rights of other groups in the community. Governments could roll out laws which pertain only to people who are public housing tenants, or who are in receipt of Centrelink benefits. Faced with community pressure to curtail violence and high crime rates in a particular geographic area a government might abolish the rights that defendants have under the criminal law such as the right against self-incrimination.
The use of the criminal law to tackle deeply entrenched dispossession and poverty is highly problematic in and of itself, but the added danger which the Howard and Gillard government's approach to Indigenous people in the Northern Territory is that it gives a green light to policy makers to make laws which erode rights and freedoms for certain categories of people in the community.
Differential treatment of people by the law in a democratic society is a tool which ought only be used sparingly and certainly not for the purposes of reducing the principle of equality before the law. The Stronger Futures legislation fails because it does exactly that.
Greg Barns is National President of the Australian Lawyers Alliance and a former government adviser. View his full profile
here.
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Vogue
magazine and went on to grace more than 500 others. The
New York Times
has called her one of the 20th century’s most influential people in fashion, and she has been honored at Oprah Winfrey’s Legends Ball. But 59-year-old Beverly Johnson shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
The woman who forever changed the face of the fashion industry is now an entrepreneur with her own namesake collection of hair extensions and wigs. On the heels of the success of the hair line, Johnson is now launching a
multi-cultural line of styling products called Model Logic in Target stores nationwide and also offers skincare products on her new e-commerce website
BeverlyJohnson.com.
“I wanted to be more than just the face on the box or the name to help sell the product. It was time to really share my secrets, formulas, talent pool of resources, and lessons learned throughout my decades as a model and actress,” Johnson says.
We also asked the beauty what she does to keep herself in supermodel form. “I stay abreast of all the latest health and beauty advice and finding my fitness passion of playing golf has been an incredible lifesaver, providing me with physical and mental nourishment,” Johnson says.
Bright Lights, Big City
and
Regarding Henry
.
The understated Chinn has since left the Hollywood scene to live a quiet life in New York City, raising her son, modeling occasionally, and teaching yoga.
“I teach several forms of yoga and Pilates to the over 50-set,” Chinn says. “My focus is core strength, flexibility, building breath capacity, alignment, and an overall sense of well-being!”
People
magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People, 47-year-old
Emme changed the ‘shape’ of fashion forever.
We caught up with the curvy beauty who speaks out on body image issues and arts funding in schools. “We live in a society that promotes a desire for thinness at any cost in the quest for the attainment of unrealistic beauty,” Emme says. “I want women to know their self-esteem is not contingent upon their dress size and good health is attainable by more than just one body type.”
Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue
, 43-year-old Roshumba is now a regular fixture on many TV shows and her book,
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being a Model
, is in its second printing.
The New York City resident tells
SHAPE
that staying in supermodel form is easy. “I eat a balanced diet, walk a lot,
lift weights, and do yoga,” Roshumba says. “But what’s most important [to me] is to stay healthy and beautiful on the inside by minimizing stress and having gratitude for everything [I have].”
The mom of two
recently ran the New York City Marathon for the third time and became a spokesperson for CIRCA, which aims to help consumers better understand the “horrific effects mining for diamonds has on the environment.”
How is she staying fit? “A little running, a little stretching, and healthy eating changes your life for the better every time you do it," she says.
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue
at the age of 30. After taking a long hiatus from modeling to battle drug addiction, anorexia, and deal with a tumultuous marriage to actor Mickey Rourke, 42-year-old Carre Otis reemerged healthier, stronger, and more beautiful than ever. Just last fall, she shared her struggles in her memoir
Beauty Disrupted
.
Now, the practicing Buddhist finds solace in her religion and regularly
practices yoga at her Colorado home.
The first African-American woman to grace the cover of Vogue, the first plus-size supermodel, and the former face of Halston, way before Sarah Jessica Parker made the label chic again—these are all milestones made by groundbreaking fashion models Beverly Johnson, Alva Chinn, and Emme. But where are they now? We caught up with six
former supermodels to find out what they are up to (bestselling books!
With that in mind, they attended a February 21 Town Hall meeting in Burlington, WA -- one of 10 Town Halls hosted by
United Fresh across the nation this month and next.
They didn't go home disappointed.
"There's a lot of new information to learn," Karen said after the meeting. "New things are happening all of the time."
New things like how the
Food Safety Modernization Act will affect the produce industry; what opportunities the government's push for more fruit and vegetables in school lunch and breakfast programs will offer growers; what's up with the 2012 Farm Bill; improved ways to track produce from the farm to the buyer; and even smart phones that can scan bar codes and give consumers information about the farmer who produced the food they're buying.
On the food-safety front, the Fuentes said they're working toward
Good Agricultural Practices certification, which is designed to establish food-safety practices on the farm.
"It might sound overwhelming at first," Karen said, referring to GAP certification, "but not if you think of it as a step-by-step process."
Their interest in food safety mirrors United Fresh's interest in food safety. It was the first topic on the docket during the Town Hall session the couple attended.
"Top of the mind" for the produce industry is how Robert Guenther, senior vice president of Public Policy for United Fresh, described the
Food Safety Modernization Act, signed into law by President Obama last year. "It's probably the most significant law to change our industry," Guenther said.
To be implemented over 3 years, the law, which calls for 12 new U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations, gives the FDA additional responsibilities, among them enhanced inspections, recordkeeping and reporting requirements, traceback pilot and training programs, and mandatory recall authority.
But underlying the act itself is a fundamental shift in food-safety policy: The focus will be on prevention instead of on responding to outbreaks.
For growers and processors, it comes down to meeting science-based standards.
But the new regs won't be a top-down set of rules, according to Guenther. Instead, there will also be significant amount of collaboration with states and various local authorities.
What about the proposed rules?
Although the law said that the FDA needed to release a set of proposed rules, one of them dealing with produce, by Jan. 4, that date came and went without any sign of the proposed rules.
However, drafts of the proposed rules have been sent to the Office of Management and Budget. Guenther said that the proposed rules will likely be released in the Federal Register in late March.
No one in the produce industry has seen the drafts.
Guenther predicts that considering the procedures that must be followed, including public comment periods that last 90 to 120 days, before the final rules are adopted, it will probably be 2013 before that happens, instead of July 2012 as originally expected.
What about the produce rule?
Guenther told the group that the produce industry has a lot of questions about what the final produce rule will look like. For example, will it spell out requirements for specific fruits and vegetables or will it be a sweeping practice-based rule that covers all produce?
As for Congress's role in all of this, Guenther said that in the current economic climate, elected officials are not eager to pass new rules that impact businesses.
"They be watching this closely," he said. "It (budget woes could slow this down during the election year."
Healthier food for kids
Guenther praised the new
"school-meal rule" as a "bright spot" for the industry because the nutrition standards for the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program double the amount of fruits and vegetables school children will be served in their lunches. In addition, a doubling of fruits served in the breakfast program will be phased in over the next 3 years.
"It's a big victory for our industry," he said.
Even so, as produce-industry reps often point out, schools will be very vigilant about making sure the growers and processors they buy from are following strict food-safety practices.
2012 Farm Bill
Until 2008, the produce industry regarded the
Farm Bill as legislation geared to benefit subsidized commodity crops such as wheat, rice and corn and therefore of little interest to the produce industry. But Guenther said that in the mid-2000s, the industry started looking at the Farm Bill as a possible opportunity.
The question that provoked that new interest came down to this: "Why is 50 percent of plant-based agriculture not included in the farm bills?"
Thanks to a unified effort on the part of many agriculture associations across the country, the 2008 Farm Bill contained what Guenther described as "unprecedented funding" for specialty crops. (Examples of speciality crops are fruits and vegetables.
The $3 billion in funding included money for state block grants, targeted research programs, and increased access for fresh produce in federal nutrition programs.
Guenther said the produce industry benefited from this additional funding all the way through the distribution chain, from the farm to the retail level. And he pointed to food safety as a good example of how these different sectors of the industry benefited from the funding.
But with ongoing budget woes, coupled with the fact that the nation currently has a strong farm economy, there are questions about how the specialty crops will fare in the 2012 Farm Bill -- or even if there will be a Farm Bill this year.
"Election year politics have divided committees on this," Guenther said, referring to the Farm Bill.
Another problem for the produce industry is that research funding through the previous Farm Bill stops this year.
Tracking the produce
"We want consumers to always feel comfortable that what they're going to buy or consume is safe," said Dan Vache, vice president of Supply Chain Management for United Fresh, in describing the reason why traceability is so important.
The 2006 E. coli outbreak from fresh cut spinach, which caused 276 illnesses and 3 deaths -- not to mention huge financial losses for spinach growers and packers -- was a wake-up call for the industry. Once awakened, many in the industry joined together to launch the Produce Traceability Initiative in 2007. The goal was to take away some of the questions there might be about where a product was grown, packed, distributed, and even who handled it.
Vache said that even though the 2006 outbreak was caused by spinach in just one location in California's Salinas Valley, "it caused havoc for our industry overall."
Fast forward to today and the FDA wants electronic records, a common language (known as GS1 , and quick information.
"They want it within 24 hours; we're finding that sometimes we can do it in a matter of hours," said Vache.
Milestones in the initiative's progress include a 14-digit number that shows, by lot number, who you are and what products are being shipped. In addition, information about who "touched" the product throughout the distribution chain can be accessed. For example, in the case of inbound shipments, a bar code stores information about that.
This year, the goal is to be able to trace outbound cases of food.
Citing last year's cantaloupe Listeria outbreak, which killed more than 30 people, as an example of why outbound information is important, Vache said that no one was tracking where the contaminated cantaloupes grown in Colorado were being shipped.
He said that the lack of consumer confidence in cantaloupes due to the Listeria outbreak had growers in other states plowing under hundreds of acres of perfectly good cantaloupes.
Vache referred to that reaction on the part of the consumers as "consumer psyche."
"It's all about consumer confidence," Vache said, referring to traceability.
Shipping produce
For a produce grower or broker, there's nothing worse than having the produce, which was in excellent condition when it was sent on its way, show up at its final destination in poor shape. That can happen if the produce wasn't handled properly every step of the way during shipping.
With that in mind, the
North American Produce Transportation Working Group, which is made up of volunteers from more than 25 national and regional produce industry associations, transportation providers, grower/shippers and perishable receivers, has crafted a set of best practices pertaining to the handling and transportation of fresh produce.
These best practices, which can be updated should changes in the industry arise, were developed to identify problem areas in the marketing chain where increased communication and agreed-upon procedures can prevent many issues in the marketing chain before they result in a problem at the final destination.
The goal is to prevent disputes.
What about small-scale producers?
In an interview directly after the Town Hall meeting in Burlington, WA, Vache and Guenther said that small-scale growers need to recognize that the world has changed.
Pointing out that the final rules in the Food Safety Modernization Act will serve as a "framework for safe practices," Guenther said these food-safety practices will be demanded by most customers.
"It will be important for growers to be able to explain to consumers that their food is safe," Guenther said. "They'll need to have a good message about what they're doing on the farm. It's very important for them to use current tools to get up to date."
As for bugs (foodborne pathogens such as E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria that can sicken or even kill people , Guenther said the bugs don't know if they're on a big or small farm.
"If you're selling to consumers, you need safeguards to protect your crops from potential contamination," he said.
Town Hall meetings
Go here for more information about United Fresh's Town Hall meetings, its 2012 Fresh Impact Tour, and its 2012 annual convention in Dallas, TX.
---------------------
Top photo of Robert Guenther, lower photo of Dan Vache
While notable for its size alone, the 114-ton recall came under scrutiny from some food safety experts for an entirely different reason: More than two months passed between the time the recall occurred on December 31 and the time it was first publicized in the February 8 report.
On the surface, it seemed that a Class I recall -- those involving a product that could cause serious injury or death -- would have been made public as soon as it happened. Instead, this one appeared downplayed and -- to some -- downright stealthy.
In the weeks that have followed, the spinach incident has sparked a discussion about the circumstances under which recalls should or should not be made public. It's a decision that pits the benefits of public knowledge against the perils of public overreaction.
Disclosure or Discretion?
The recall in question, voluntarily issued by Texas-based Tiro Tres Farms, was never linked to any E. coli infections. Tiro Tres does not package spinach for consumers, instead distributing it in bulk to processors who repackage it as their own, and so only the processors were notified of the recall on December 31.
Microbiologist Phyllis Entis first brought the situation to attention on her website,
eFoodAlert, the day after the FDA published its information. She criticized the FDA, saying she could not understand the rationale behind not notifying the public of a Class I recall. The next day, Food Safety News ran a story of its own,
"Big Spinach Recall with No Public Notice."
It's unclear how many processors received the spinach, or how much of it made it to the supermarket and restaurant kitchens. What is known, however, is that it had passed its "best-by" date before Tiro Tres' sample tests came back positive and processors were notified. Tiro Tres had distributed this batch to processors in Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ontario and Quebec.
One processor in Pennsylvania already knew there was a problem. Avon Heights Mushroom had issued an earlier recall to customers based on its own testing. That recall was announced by the FDA on December 23. That spinach had been sold as fresh packaged spinach with a "best-by" date of December 16 under the brand names Krisp Pak, Better Brands" and Avon Heights Select.
Given that Avon Heights' recall occurred a full eight days before Tiro Tres announced a voluntary recall to other processors, it's possible that Avon's tests prompted Tiro Tres to test.
In
an interview with Fresh Cut Magazine, the owner of Tiro Tres Farms said that Avon's contaminated spinach was linked to a 27,600-pound batch, while the remaining spinach appeared to have been recalled out of caution. After inspecting Avon Heights' facility and spending three days at Tiro Tres, FDA officials could not find a source for the contamination.
No Public Benefit?
When asked why the FDA didn't publicize the Tiro Tres recall, the agency told Food Safety News that it would not have benefitted the public, considering that the spinach was well past its expiration date and was only sent to processors. It would have been up to the processors such as Avon Heights, it seems, to issue a recall to consumers if they thought it was necessary.
According to the FDA's Regulatory Procedures Manual, "It is FDA's policy that press releases are issued for Class I recalls unless specific circumstances indicate that a press release would not be beneficial to the public."
Entis didn't buy it.
"[The U.S. Department of Agriculture], to its credit, notifies the public of any Class I recall [in their jurisdiction], even when the food just goes to food service or institutions. They don't use that excuse," she told Food Safety News. "I don't understand why the FDA does not do the same."
Entis added that with most contemporary pathogens tests returning results in 24 to 48 hours, she does not understand why a farm would be running tests that would not produce results until after their product had shipped out to processors, let alone expired.
Produce industry expert Jim Prevor disagreed with Entis, saying the FDA's move was justified. In a response to the situation on his website,
Perishable Pundit, he argued against announcing recalls of products that don't go directly to consumers, saying nondisclosure was the responsible path. Based on the information available at the time, Prevor said that one could assume that the spinach did not reach any customers.
"When should consumers be notified? Generally speaking, it comes down to one thing and one thing only: Is the product in the hands of a consumer? If it is, then they should issue a public recall," he told Food Safety News.
Prevor noted that recalls affect sales for the entire industry of the food in question, not just the one producer with a contaminated shipment. When the FDA warned the public specifically not to eat Rocky Ford-brand cantaloupes from Colorado in the 2011 cantaloupe Listeria outbreak, cantaloupe farmers' profits suffered across the board. Announcing a big spinach recall, however specific, can hurt sales for all spinach growers.
Even then, for any spinach that might have made it to the store, the fact that the contaminated batch was already well-past its expiration date made slim prospects for catching any leftover product.
"Sometimes things are learned very late in the process, and as a result, the product is so old that it couldn't possibly still be out there to be eaten," Prevor said. "In those situations, the FDA will decide there's nothing to be gained by notifying the public. It's not that it's not announced -- all these things are announced to processors -- they're just not promoted to consumers."
Testing to Check Practices, Not to Protect Consumers
But why test for pathogens if the results don't come back until after the expiration date?
As Prevor explained, the primary purpose of pathogen testing on farms is not to protect consumers, but to make sure that the farm's practices are generally safe over time. Contamination events can be so localized that random testing will never catch every bug, he said, and anything more than random testing becomes too costly for most operations.
"Let's say we have a field of spinach with 200 million spinach leaves. If we went through and randomly picked a few to test, we might get negative tests on all, but there might be a thousand leaves in the field that are positive. To test them all, we'd have to charge $200 for a bag of spinach," he said. "There's no way to guarantee everything is 100 percent safe. If you think that's unacceptable, you're asking that we only sell cooked spinach."
Entis agreed that absolute guarantees for food safety were impossible and pathogens tests on farms were largely meant to monitor consistency in food safety, but she emphasized that a positive test result is never something to ignore.
"Speaking as a microbiologist, finding a pathogen via random testing is so difficult that when you do find one, you know you've got a problem," Entis said. "It's not a theoretical problem. It doesn't matter if someone got sick or not. If the problem is not corrected, it's only going to get worse. We've seen this happen over and over again."
While she also agreed that not all recalls needed publicizing, Entis argued in favor of greater public disclosure for the sake of better scrutiny. If companies have repeated contaminations and recalls, for example, people should have the right to know they could be dealing with an unreliable product.
"I think consumers have a right to know if a company has processed and shipped a product that turned out to be contaminated with a deadly pathogen," she said. "Try to protect the consumer so they can choose if they want to support that product in the future. How else are we supposed to become informed consumers who make informed decisions?"
Following the attention the big spinach recall received, Entis decided to look back through the last four months of FDA enforcement reports for any other unannounced Class I recalls. She
found six such recalls described in enforcement reports since November 2011.
That revelation did not surprise Prevor, who said the FDA takes a number of precautions into account before announcing recalls.
"There are a lot of different values here that have to be balanced," Prevor said. "One value -- without a doubt -- is safe food. But we also don't want broke farmers and people in a panic when they're not at risk, either."
Test and Hold to be Safe
Some farms, however, have taken it upon themselves to test and hold produce before shipping anything out.
Since transforming its food safety program in 2006, California-based Earthbound Farms has become an industry leader in foodborne illness prevention. Earthbound was involved in the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in spinach that sickened over 200 people across 26 states and Canada and killed five.
Following the 2006 outbreak, Earthbound decided to adopt a preventative strategy for spinach and other higher-risk produce. Instead of performing random testing, they now test a sample from each pallet they ship, holding the product for 12 to 16 hours until they receive a result.
According to Will Daniels, Earthbound's senior vice president of food safety, the farm's detection system will catch 99.99 percent of E. coli, Salmonella or Shigella passing through its various testing hurdles. Simply put, they have refused to be involved with any more illnesses.
Daniels said paying for their proprietary testing system, holding space, upgraded equipment and a scientific advisory panel ends up costing roughly three additional cents per bag of spinach. The bottom line, however, outweighs any cuts to profits:
"After 2006, we knew we needed to do more," he said. "We're in the business of healthy food and healthy food doesn't carry pathogens that make people sick. This is just the right thing to do."
Like Prevor and Entis, Daniels agreed that random sampling cannot be trusted to prevent foodborne illness outbreaks. But no other farms have yet adopted the test-and-hold method to the extent of Earthbound. Implementing such an extensive system takes time and money, and beyond that, doggedness.
"Contamination is highly sporadic -- it's in one little tiny section of a field when the rest is clean," Daniels said. "When we started doing this, the criticism was, 'You're looking for a needle in a haystack.' But here we are, five years into it, and we are catching contamination and preventing it from going into our processing stream."
Earthbound detects contamination on approximately 0.15 percent of its produce -- 3,000 pounds out of the 2 million it ships each week. Whenever a contamination is detected, not only is the produce saved from potentially harming customers, but the situation gives Earthbound technicians an opportunity to study how the contamination occurred and remedy it. They have amassed a lot of their field lessons into a database of information on how pathogens behave on produce.
"Those people who criticized our program for its vigor back in 2006 are now asking me for the data," Daniels said. "From our perspective, we have lots of great evidence that suggests our program is viable. We're committed to it. We won't back away from it."
As for when recalls should be made public, Daniels kept his viewpoint uncharacteristically simple:
"If the consuming public is at risk of illness," he said, "they should be made aware."
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Thanks to Daniel B. Cohen for contributing his knowledge of the produce industry. Photo of Will Daniels courtesy Earthbound Farms.
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