Organic? There’s probably poop on it

Another case of certified-organic food contaminated with feces has surfaced — and the media are obligingly doing their darnedest to cover it up.

California-based Taylor Farms has sickened more than 600 people across 19 states with cyclosporiasis, a stomach illness caused by parasites that are only found in feces.

Three weeks ago I reported the case of hepatitis-A-infected certified-organic pomegranate seeds sold by Costco in a frozen berry mix that caused 150 people to fall ill across eight states; 61 people required hospitalization and the lawsuits flew. The story went largely unreported.

You’ll recall how authorities in Canada and the United States prohibit the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in organic production and encourage natural compost instead, but they do not test for un-composted feces, relying instead on record-keeping and record-checking. You’ll also recall my suggesting that a simple $20 fecal coliform test carried out on an organic crop intended for human consumption could prevent such catastrophes.

Where did these feces come from? In the case of the aforementioned hepatitis outbreak, authorities assured everyone it was probably just improper hand washing. But they were never able to find the culprit, nor explain why someone with hepatitis would even be working in the food industry, especially the organic industry which is supposed to be purer and safer.

If the fields at Taylor Farms are fertilized with manure that is not fully composted, no one will find out until it’s too late, i.e. when customers start to fall ill, over 500 of them in this case.

Improper hand washing can be lethal, even deadly, but it’s usually limited in scope. People who work in the food industry – whether in the field, in a processing facility or in a restaurant – simply don’t come into contact with enough product to infect very many consumers.

Un-composted fecal matter on the other hand can easily infect an entire field, or multiple fields. This results in the contamination of vast quantities of crop before it’s even harvested. And, to compound matters, pathogens resulting from un-composted feces can make their way right into the cells of a plant where no amount of washing can remove it.

Taylor Farms is trying to defend itself on the basis that it has an extensive water testing program. So if feces ever get into their irrigation system, they’ll catch it. But due to lack of uniformity in organic farming methods, if the feces added to fertilizer are not fully composted, the results can be harmful for the consumer.

I reached out to many people in the agricultural media and asked them why they’re not blowing the whistle on the complete lack of field testing in the multibillion dollar American organic industry. Sadly, many just shrugged their shoulders and indicated they didn’t really care one way or another.

A few said they asked the CEO of Taylor Farms Bruce Taylor point blank if this outbreak was from his organic line of salad mixes, or his conventional line (Taylor Farms is operated as a “split” or “parallel” operation meaning they offer both certified-organic and conventional products of the same types and varieties). He assured them, privately, that it was from his conventional line, that his organic line is fine, and that was that. But if this was the case, wouldn’t the CEO of a multimillion dollar company want to make it abundantly clear that his organic line was unaffected? Why would he allow uncertainty to persist, especially after experiencing pathogenic outbreak after outbreak in his organic line in the past?

When I first became an organic inspector, I asked why we didn’t perform simple, inexpensive tests in the field to see whether prohibited, performance-enhancing substances like synthetic pesticides were being used on organic crops. It was only once I was in the field performing inspections that I realized there was a far more pressing problem with how organic crops become certified: improperly composted, and in some cases un-composted manure not only violates what it means for something to be organic, it also disqualifies it as food.

I raised my concerns with my superiors and got nothing close to a satisfactory answer. The excuses ranged from, “We already do field testing to ensure organic crops are safe and genuine” to “Field testing is too expensive and will drive up the cost of organic food!”

So which is it? Did 600 people fall ill because we’re already testing in the multibillion dollar organic industry, or because it’s too expensive to perform a $20 fecal coliform test?

Mischa Popoff is a former organic farmer and organic inspector. He’s the author of Is it Organic? which you can preview at www.isitorganic.ca.