———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Sep 22, 2006 5:44 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times op-ed points to cattle farming as cause of E.coli spinach care 9/21/06

This week, America shunned spinach after some was found to carry a deadly strain of E.coli bacteria. The Thursday, September 21, New York Times, however, included an op-ed, by Nina Planck, author of “Real Food: What to Eat and Why,” who suggests that the spinach farmers are not the culprits.

In the piece titled, “Leafy Green Sewage” (pg A31) Planck writes:

“Indeed, this epidemic, which has infected more than 100 people and resulted in at least one death, probably has little do with the folks who grow and package your greens. The detective trail ultimately leads back to a seemingly unrelated food industry — beef and dairy cattle.

She explains that E. coli O157:H7 is different from most E.coli which is harmless to humans. She writes:

“Where does this particularly virulent strain come from? It’s not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. No, O157 thrives in a new — that is, recent in the history of animal diets — biological niche: the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms. It’s the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms.”

And she discusses “the contamination of ground water, flood water and rivers — all irrigation sources on spinach farms — by the E-coli-infected manure from cattle farms.”

She writes:

“The United States Department of Agriculture does recognize the threat from these huge lagoons of waste, and so pays 75 percent of the cost for a confinement cattle farmer to make manure pits watertight, either by lining them with concrete or building them above ground. But taxpayers are financing a policy that only treats the symptom, not the disease, and at great expense. There remains only one long-term remedy, and it’s still the simplest one: stop feeding grain to cattle.”

And she concludes

“California’s spinach industry is now the financial victim of an outbreak it probably did not cause, and meanwhile, thousands of acres of other produce are still downstream from these lakes of E. coli-ridden cattle manure. So give the spinach growers a break, and direct your attention to the people in our agricultural community who just might be able to solve this deadly problem: the beef and dairy farmers.”

You’ll find the full piece on line here. It addresses a danger of factory farming from the standpoint of public health but does not mention animal welfare. Most cattle, fed on corn, live pathetic lives. Contrary to the images we remember from childhood of animals grazing in meadows, those raised for beef and milk today live in disgusting feedlots, often knee-deep in their own manure, with no protection from the elements. In 2002 the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story, ‘This Steer’s Life,’ in which Michael Pollan documented the life of a steer from birth to death. That piece is available on Pollan’s website. It is well worth reading.

Planck’s op-ed deserves some appreciative letters to the editor against factory farming. Feel free to sing the praises of a veggie diet.

The New York Times takes letters at letters [at] nytimes.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published. And please be careful not to use any exact phrases from this alert in your letters; the editors wish to receive original reactions from their readers.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

—————————————-