A view on the E. coli spinach outbreak from the original owner of Riverside Farms, one of the farms at the center of the controversy.

Spinach!? by Andy Griffin

Deborah Schot, a reporter from the L.A. Times, called me to ask for an opinion about the e coli outbreak in prepackaged fresh spinach that has killed one person and sickened hundreds more. And yes, I have an opinion. I think the F.D.A. employee that I heard on the radio yesterday urging people to play it safe and not eat fresh spinach is ignorant. Although the victims got sick by eating spinach from a sealed bag it’s wrong to seize on spinach as the culprit in the controversy; it makes more sense to look at the processing and handling of pre-packaged greens in general. Put another way, it’s the harvest procedures that were followed, the pre-washed claim made for the greens, and the bagged environment the greens are in that are the relevant issues, not the specific variety of leafy greens that were actually contaminated at some point during the harvest and post harvest handling. By fingering any spinach as suspicious, even bunched fresh spinach, the F.D.A. isn’t educating anyone, or solving the problem. They’re just spreading fear on a national scale...