One short question: Why is it they can't figure out the food is bad before selling it?

[originalpckelly]

Now it's yet another spinach producer with yet another bad batch of spinach.

Why can't we know food is bad before it is even shipped, let alone sold to people?

It would seem to make sense to save the companies producing the stuff money on shipping, wouldn't it? Doesn't it cost a lot of money to ship spinach all around the country? Why waste that money?

Maybe it would make too much sense to figure out a way to figure out if food is bad before it is shipped.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Customer guinea pigs are free.

[napi21]

2. I suspect few producers have the equipment necessary to test

produce for ecoli or much else. I'm not even sure how they would do it? I've never heard how much of the, in this case spinach, was contaminated, or if they simply recalled everything because a few people got sick. Was it entire fields that were contaminated or maybe one section were there was some runoff from a neighboring farm? How would they test it? By field? By batch?

I'm not trying to excuse the grower or the packager, but just asking the questions. Is what we are asking for possible?

[shraby]

3. Until just recently, I've never heard of

fresh vegetables making a person sick and I've been around for 65 years. Cooked and not properly stored, has and will make you sick but it's really unusual for fresh ones to be dangerous to eat. There's more here than meets the eye. I lived on a farm as a kid and as an adult had my own gardens...never had anything fresh make us sick...except green apples.
A thought..they might be using human waste to fertilize and that's a big no-no...it will cause sickness.

[NC_Nurse]

4. I think it's coming from the people harvesting it.

They may not be washing their hands after using the bathroom - if they even HAVE a bathroom near the field.
Not a pleasant thought, but that's my guess.

[TahitiNut]

5. Some of it is due to (migrant) laborers being forced to use the field as a toilet ...

... due to not being provided adequate facilities or breaks.

[depakid]

6. Too many steps in the industrial agriculture process

Too many potential sources for the contamination from field to table.

(of course, gutting the regulatory agencies doesn't help either).

[Demeter]

7. There Is No Quality Control

The previous contamination came from cattle grazing upriver; their feces drained into the greens, which were not washed, etc.

If a real farmer lived on the land, waslked its borders, and ate its produce, this wouldn't be an issue. What we have now are factories, not farms: as far removed from good agricultural practices as they can be, in favor of mass production and cost cutting.