Farmers Pledge Steps to Avoid Contamination of Produce
Article from today’s New York Times — Farmers Pledge Steps to Avoid Contamination of Produce, by Jesse McKinley:
Amid growing governmental pressure and public concern about an E. coli outbreak
caused by contaminated spinach, California farmers promised new procedures for
growing, handling and shipping their produce on Thursday, in hopes of lifting a
week-old government warning about the crop.
The guidelines were announced just hours after federal and state health authorities
met with hundreds of concerned and occasionally angry farmers crammed into a Farm
Bureau office here to offer their help in ending an agricultural crisis that is estimated
by trade officials to have already cost the spinach industry $50 million.