Spinach hasn't recovered

Consumers still leery of bagged spinach following recall

FRESNO, Calif. (AP)--Before a deadly strain of E. coli was found in packaged spinach, Robin Boney ate it almost every day--in salads, omelets and sautéed with dinner.

"I loved it. Still do. I'm not going to stop eating spinach forever, but I haven't bought bagged spinach since the E. coli," said Boney, 54, of Clovis.

That lagging confidence has growers and marketers scared the country's estimated $374 million spinach business will not recover following the recent bacterial outbreak that killed three people and sickened nearly 200 others.

Farmers in California, where three-quarters of all domestically grown spinach is produced, could face up to $74 million in losses, according to researchers with Western Growers, a group that represents produce farmers in California and Arizona.

The Salinas Valley, nicknamed "America's Salad Bowl," will probably suffer the most, said Dennis Donohue, head of the local chamber of commerce. He estimates the region's $180 million spinach industry will take a hit of about $60 million.

"We're worried. We expect the economic consequences to be much more significant than just spinach," he said.

Consumers may shun other packaged greens, he said, an industry that has grown in recent years as convenience-minded Americans looked for healthy food options.

Since the outbreak, Boney has bought spinach from farmers' markets, but she's leery of greens that are packaged or have traveled too far, she said, looking over bins of organic leafy greens at a Whole Foods in Fresno recently. She skipped over the bulk spinach where a display sign showed it was grown in Santa Cruz County.

Federal food safety agents recalled bagged spinach traced to a batch processed at the San Juan Bautista plant of Natural Selection Foods LLC, which packages spinach under 34 brand names including Dole, the brand eaten by many of the sickened people.

Test results found the same strain of the deadly E. coli bacteria in cow manure at a cattle ranch near a Salinas Valley spinach farm earlier this month, but it's still unclear how the pathogen traveled to the plants.

The Food and Drug Administration gave spinach the all-clear on Sept. 29, but memories of the E. coli scare stick in the minds of shoppers, said William E. Rice, a marketing professor at California State University, Fresno.

"As soon as somebody dies, then you've created something in people's minds that's very hard to overcome," he said.

The first buyers to return will be spinach lovers, but people who didn't eat the vegetable as much will be hesitant to take a chance on it, he said.

Chef Jim Ritchie has seen the decline in orders of his popular spinach pizza and had to change his menu during the recall.

"People panic really easily. It's easy for them to get scared off of something and harder for them to come back to it," said Ritchie, who also owns Senses, a Fresno restaurant that features mostly organic fare.

He used organic spinach from Earthbound Farm, a label produced by Natural Selection, until the recall, he said.

Sales of salads packaged by Natural Selection for such brands as Dole have dropped 70 percent since the recall and organic sales are down 10 percent, said Samantha Cabaluna, a spokeswoman for Natural Selection.

"Of course, we lost a lot. We were in the eye of the hurricane," she said.

The company has since adopted a product-testing method in which samples are taken from every load of greens and examined for E. coli and salmonella over an 18-hour period before they are shipped, Cabaluna said.

Several other products in the No. 1 agricultural state faced recalls recently, some of them voluntary. Producers of raw milk, carrot juice and lettuce destroyed some of their products after some customers claimed they suffered from E. coli and botulism.

While businesses at the end of the line for spinach are seeing the effects of the spinach recall, farmers readying for next season's crop are wondering how much to invest.

Growers in the Imperial Valley and Yuma, Ariz.--where planting is gearing up for the winter--are cutting back on planting by as much as half, a sharp contrast to a recent surge in spinach production mostly fueled by growing demand for bagged greens.

Past recalls have shown that shoppers rarely remember a brand or region, instead taking it out on the whole industry, Rice said.

"If history has anything to do with it, items that were pulled off the shelves because of disease will hurt in the long-term," he said.

Date: 10/26/06

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