Maddening Media Misinformation on Biotech and Industrial Agriculture (Part 5 of 5)

ACSH
By Thomas R. DeGregori
August 17, 2007

Here’s Part 5 of a 5-part article series by Tom DeGregori focusing on the affects media misinformation has on both biotech agriculture and industrial agriculture.

To conclude my look at anti-technology bias in the media, let us turn to the issue of E coli 0157:H7 in spinach. Fortunately, for the purposes of this posting, Alex Avery in an ACSH piece has done an outstanding job of showing that e coli 0157:H7 contaminated spinach came from a plot that was being grown using organic methods and that the source of the E. coli was a nearby low-density cattle ranch that touted its ecological sensitivity because the cows were grass fed (Avery 2007). More important, Alex shows that when the investigation was largely completed, the media failed to carry the story. This means that the prevailing beliefs remained unchallenged.

I could not find a single wire service report or mainstream media piece informing readers that the spinach outbreak was traced back to grass-fed cattle. There were no AP stories mentioning this, no Reuters, no L.A. Times, not even the organic-food-centric New York Times. Only my own October 30th blog and a self-posted op-ed (no major outlet accepted it) that almost my whole family read.

Similarly, there have been only a handful of stories reporting the February 27th revelation by California regulators that the fifty-acre spinach field was transitioning to “certified” organic status and that the tainted spinach was, thus, “organically grown.” (Avery 2007)

It would be interesting to sample some of the spin that was given on the E. coli spinach, misinformation that remains in the virtual world of the Web.

Old-Fashioned Agriculture, Decades-Old Propaganda

Even before the outbreak, there had been decades of propaganda about the virtues of organic food. Among those making these proclamations were the very farm and ranch that became the source of E. coli 0157:H7. Earthbound Farms advertised that it sold “Food for Life,” adding that “It’s just plain healthy to include lots of organic vegetables in your diet” (Avery and Avery 2006). We learn further that Paicines Ranch is “strictly a grass-only, pasture-based operation — the kind they themselves advocate as the ’safe alternative’ to so-called ‘factory farms’” (CFGI 2006). To add to the irony, the Center for Global Food Issues article finds some even more telling quotes from the Paicines Ranch webpage.

The ranch’s website even refers visitors to a website that claims people who eat grass-fed beef have “a much lower risk of becoming infected with the [E. coli bacteria]” and that E. coli O157:H7 from grass-fed cattle are far less likely “to survive the natural acidity of our digestive tract” (CFGI 2006).

If you are a true believer, then it is easy to leap from your belief system to what you imagine to be the real world. One writer, Sally Kohn, was able to identify precisely the source of the E. coli 0157:H7 without having a single substantiating fact. “The E. coli came from an industrial cattle ranch nearby. Tightly packed cows were overfed with unhealthy grain and produced E. coli in their feces. The contaminated feces washed downstream into the water supply, infecting the spinach fields” (Kohn 2006). I am sure that she very clearly saw every detail of this ranch in her dreams.

Craig Holdrege was certain that “Factory farming and concentration of the food supply is the issue here, not organic food” (Holdrege 2007). Tony Maws was equally certain as to the source. “As the Organic Consumers Association website reports, some have even tried to blame organic farming practices for this outbreak. Come on! This is absurd.” Come on, Tony! Care to post a retraction — or is that too absurd? Never to be outdone, the Union of Concerned Scientists had an early posting titled “Don’t blame the spinach: Industrial agriculture at fault” (UCS 2006).

The outbreak also highlights other unsafe practices, such as feeding cattle antibiotics and an unnatural diet of grain, which increases the likelihood that their manure will contain the particularly virulent type of E. coli bacteria that caused the illnesses and overloading fields with manure from feedlots (UCS 2006).

Beliefs Are Routinely Based on Inaccurate, Shorthand Accounts

It is amazing how a simplified version of the findings of the Science article by Francisco Diez-Gonzalez, Todd R. Callaway, Menas G. Kizoulis and James B. Russell (1998) has become a canned litany repeated as needed by activists attributing E. coli 0157:H7 to grain-fed cattle, as if someone in the movement has read a peer-reviewed article and summed it up in a few repeatable lines for their followers.

One critic of Alex Avery’s article, Diane Reifschneider didn’t even bother to read the article but instead cited from memory the Cornell University press release on it. If she or any others in the movement had troubled to read the article online, they would have found a number of links to other articles that had cited it. This was a mixed bag of research, some of which seem to replicate the Diez-Gonzales et al study while others came to an opposite conclusion. An article in Science should be taken seriously but not as the gospel truth to close out all further inquiry.

We might add that even before the Science article, there was published research showing that there were a number of reservoirs for E. coli 0157:H7 that could infect domesticated animals, including free range cattle.

Recent E. coli O157:H7 investigations have established that deer are a source of the pathogen and that transmission of the pathogen may occur between deer and cattle (Keene et al., 1997; Rice et al., 1995). Sheep have also been identified as a reservoir of E. coli O157:H7 (Kudva et al., 1996) (Buchanan and Doyle, 1997).

We also know that a number of other wild animals are carriers of it. A feral pig with the bacteria was found on Paicines Ranch, and it is thought that feral pigs may have carried the bacteria to where the spinach was grown. The most virulent outbreaks of E. coli 0157:H7 have not even been associated with cattle or any other livestock.

E. coli O157:H7 is similar to Shigella in its association with day-care centers, which are often foci for infections (Belongia et al., 1993). The largest reported E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, which caused thousands of illnesses, occurred in Japan in 1996. This outbreak and a second one a year later were associated with radish sprouts. Alfalfa sprouts were also implicated in a recent outbreak in the U.S. (Buchanan and Doyle 1997).

The Boring, Tardy Truth Rarely Gets Attention

We have taken just a small sample of the plethora of statements blaming the E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak on spinach on modern agriculture. One heard TV anchors asking whether we ought to play it safe and eat only organic. Such sentiments were widely expressed. To my knowledge, not only have the results of the investigation not been widely reported, as Alex has noted, not a single one of those individuals who spouted such clearly erroneous statements had the courage to issue a retraction. In other words, the average citizen who tried to follow the story is most likely left with the wrong conclusion.

Let us close with a passage from Nature Biotechnology’s response to Craig Holdrege:

The most comprehensive peer-reviewed study to look at contamination of produce found that organic fruits and vegetables are three times more likely to be contaminated with bacteria than conventional produce; indeed, of all the produce tested, the study found the pathogen Salmonella exclusively in organic lettuce and organic green peppers. Of a total of 15 farms that had E. coli-positive samples, thirteen were organic and only two were conventional.

There is a simple fix available, however, that could stem the rising tide of cases of food-borne illness in the United States. Irradiation of fruits and vegetables would eliminate 99.999% of pathogens. It would have prevented or drastically reduced all of last year’s E. coli outbreaks. And most important of all, it would have saved lives. It’s hard to understand why a country that already irradiates its meat should not do the same to its fruits and vegetables (Nature Biotechnology).

References (for all five parts of this series, the prior four of which are viewable here, here, here, and here)

Avery, Alex. 2007. Misinformation Machine Media: An apology to Joe Mendelson for thinking he lied to an audience at the National Academy of Sciences, American Council on Science and Health, Health Facts And Fears.com, 15 March. http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.937/news_detail.asp

Avery, Dennis and Alex Avery. 2006. Organic farming more dangerous to consumers, Pantagraph.com (Illinois), 15 October. http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/10/15/opinion/viewpoint/120023.txt

BBC. 2001a. Poultry bugs spark poisoning fears, 28 February. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1192827.stm

BBC. 2001b. Shop chickens “rife”‘ with food bug, 16 August. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1493558.stm

BBC. 2002. Poison risk in outdoor chickens, 19 November. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2493619.stm

BBC. 2003. Bug “infects two-thirds of turkeys,” 15 December. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/3318761.stm

BBC 2005a. Dioxin found in German eggs, BBC online, 17 January. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4182029.stm

BBC. 2005b. Poultry farmers face flu concerns, 24 October. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/4369514.stm

Belongia, E.A., Osterholm, M.T., Soler, J.T., Ammend, D.A., Braun, J.E., and acDonald, K.L. 1993. Transmission of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infection in Minnesota child day-care facilities. J. Am. Med. Assn. 269:883-889.

Blythman, Joanna. 2006. So who’s really to blame for bird flu? The Guardian (UK), Wednesday 7 June.

Buchanan, Robert L. and Michael P. Doyle. 1997. Foodborne Disease Significance of Escherichia coliO157:H7 and Other Enterohemorrhagic E.coli, Food Technology 51(10), 10 October.

CFGFI (Center for Global Food Issues) 2007. Deadly Organic Spinach, 9 March. http://www.cgfi.org/cgficommentary/deadly-organic-spinach

Cummins, Ronnie (Organic Consumers Association). 2006. Industrial food supply at root of E. coli problems, Pantagraph.com (Illinois)15 October. http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/10/15/opinion/viewpoint/120024.txt

DeGregori, Thomas R. 2002. The Zero Risk Fiction, American Council on Science and Health, Health Facts And Fears.com, 12 April. http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.114/healthissue_detail.asp

Diez-Gonzalez, Francisco; Todd R. Callaway, Menas G. Kizoulis, James B. Russell. 1998. Grain Feeding and the Dissemination of Acid-Resistant Escherichia coli from Cattle. Science 281(5383):1666-1668, 11 September.

Gilbert, M; P Chaitaweesub, T Parakamawongsa, S Premashthira, T Tiensin, W. Kalpravidh, Hans Wagner and Jan Slingenbergh. 2006 Free grazing ducks and highly pathogenic avian influenza, Thailand. Atlanta, Georgia: Emerging Infectious Disease, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 12(2)227-233, February. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no02/05 0640.htm

Holdrege, Craig. 2007. Blame factory farming, not organic food,
Nature Biotechnology 25:165, 1 February.

Hulse-Post, D.J.; K. M. Sturm-Ramirez, J. Humberd, P. Seiler, E. A. Govorkova, S. Krauss, C. Scholtissek , P. Puthavathana, C. Buranathai, T. D. Nguyen;, H. T. Long, T. S. P. Naipospos, H. Chen, T. M. Ellis, Y. Guan, J. S. M. Peiris, and R. G. Webster. 2005. Role of domestic ducks in the propagation and biological evolution of highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza viruses in Asia. Washington, D.C.: Proceedings of the Natlional Academy of Sciiences (PNAS) USA, 10682-10687, 19 July.

Keene, W.E., Sazie, E., Kok, J., Rice, D.H., Hancock, D.D., Balan, V.K., Zhao, T., and Doyle, M.P. 1997. Outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections traced to jerky made from deer meat. J. Am. Med. Assn. 277:1229-1231.

Kohn, Sally. 2006. Corporate Agribusiness Is Behind Our Deadly Food Supply, AlterNet. 18 December. http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/45530/

Kudva, I.T., Hatfield, P.G., and Hovde, C.J. 1996. Escherichia coli O157:H7 in microbial flora of sheep. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 34: 431-433.

Maws, Tony. 2006. The Spinach Scare, Craigie Street Bistrot, 19 September. http://www.craigiestreetbistrot.com/blog.htm

MacKenzie, Debora. 2006. Bird lovers in denial over bird flu, New Scientist 90(2552):24, 20 May.

Nature Biotechnolgy. 2007. Blame factory farming, not organic food: a response, Nature Biotechnology 25:165, 1 February.

Olsen, Sonja J.; Yongjua Laosiritaworn, Sarika Pattanasin, Prabda Prapasiri, and Scott F. Dowell. 2005. Poultry-handling Practices during Avian Influenza Outbreak, Thailand. Atlanta, Georgia: Emerging Infectious Disease, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,11(10) October.

O’Neill, Brendan. 2007. Polluting Minds, Guardian Unlimited online, http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brendan_oneill/2007/07/polluting_minds.html, 25 July.

Orent, Wendy. 2006. Blame Big Chicken Farms for Bird Flu Threat:
Lethal virus is a product of the industrial poultry trade. Houston, Texas: Houston Chronicle Viewpoints, Outlook; 19 March.

Rice, D.H., Hancock, D.D., and Besser, T.E. 1995. Verotoxigenic E. coli O157:H7 colonization of wild deer and range cattle. Vet. Rec. 137: 524.

Sheppard, Robert. 2007. Return of the monarch. CBC News online (Canadian Broadcasting), 30 July. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/nature/monarchs.html

UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists). 2006. Don’t blame the spinach: Industrial agriculture at fault. 10 October. http:// www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/feed/feed-october-2006.html

WHO (World Health Organization). 2005. World Health Organization Avian Flu Page: Avian influenza frequently asked questions, Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, revised 5 December. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/en/index.html

WHO (World Health Organization). 2007. World Health Organization, H5N1 avian influenza: timeline of major events, 17 July. http:// www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/ai_timeline/en/index.html

Thomas R. DeGregori is a Professor of Economics at the University of Houston and a member of the Founders Circle of the American Council on Science and Health. His homepage is: http://www.uh.edu/~trdegregSource: ACSH.