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FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

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Re: FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

#11

Post by jackyinger »

NewLincoln wrote: post #6
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #2

I've been buying local produce, when I can. I signed up for a CSA share in the spring and get an assortment of fresh veggies every week. The same place does have a local farm stand, so you don't have to sign up for the whole summer if you just want to buy some veggies. There are a couple of "Saturday market" type things in my town, where people have booths selling produce also, but from what I can see there is no req…

We took our garden more seriously this year and we are totally overwhelmed with tomatoes and cucumbers. I planted potatoes for the first time this year and they are ready to go. Had a huge pea harvest earlier in the summer. Unfortunately it's been too hot for our lettuce. It's been fun planning meals around what we have (supplementing what we need from the store obviously)

Congrats! Being overwhelmed with tomatoes and cucumbers sounds like a great opportunity to can tomatoes and pickle cucumbers.

Re: FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

#13

Post by sonic45132 »

smerrill2 wrote: post #3
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #2

I've been buying local produce, when I can. I signed up for a CSA share in the spring and get an assortment of fresh veggies every week. The same place does have a local farm stand, so you don't have to sign up for the whole summer if you just want to buy some veggies. There are a couple of "Saturday market" type things in my town, where people have booths selling produce also, but from what I can see there is no req…

I had this exact same epiphany when going to one of my local "farmers markets" last saturday. I noticed a suspicious amount of vegetables that should've died during the last few weeks of this spiraling heat and they were all perfectly green. It made me suspicious and I found myself thinking about bylaws for farmers markets. I don't think there are any; so I'm sure there is nothing stopping vendors from just reselling…

In Florida there have been some articles talking about how some local farmers markets produce may actually be the rejected produce from the southern grocery chain Publix, rather than local growers selling directly.

https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fab...

Re: FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

#14

Post by armitron »

solid_fuel wrote: post #9
nothercastle wrote: post #4

FDA has failed. We’re going to need you start to look up Costco and Walmart or local organic cart body’s to regulate because the FDA can’t.

It was fine for decades, I wonder what changed. Maybe the republicans did something stupid like putting a bunch of incompetent jackasses in charge.

It wasn't fine for decades. Both democrats and republicans allowed regulatory capture to take place.

Re: FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

#15

Post by phil21 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #2

I've been buying local produce, when I can. I signed up for a CSA share in the spring and get an assortment of fresh veggies every week. The same place does have a local farm stand, so you don't have to sign up for the whole summer if you just want to buy some veggies. There are a couple of "Saturday market" type things in my town, where people have booths selling produce also, but from what I can see there is no req…

Generally speaking, from having family who were organic market garden farmers who also did a few farmers markets stalls…

Smaller markets tend to be better and more curated/policed by the organizers. This typically means you are driving to a smaller town on the outskirts of a larger urban area. If you are an infrequent buyer this is probably your best bet, plus just the eyeball test.

If you are a weekly shopper, it’s a bit easier to sus out reliably even for the larger markets. Find booths that have the same people staffing them most of the time, who can speak to the product. Look for “ugly” produce - the stuff that looks like it’s made for display at Whole Foods is almost always going to be commercially grown since those varieties are for aesthetics vs. taste. And of course look for booths that generally tend to only have stuff that is in season. Their product mix should shift throughout the growing season in most places.

The latter can by a tiny bit tricky since some local farms are going to have hoop houses and even greenhouses for a few different kinds of veggies. The hoop houses especially are used in part to “time shift” the growing season so as to take advantage of a market where you are a few weeks early or late compared to competitors.

Certainly not perfect but most of the time it’s immediately obvious to me which booths are obviously simply reselling. I’m sure some operations can fake it a bit better, but I would be surprised if I was wrong very often on false positives.

Re: FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

#16

Post by jjk166 »

TFA could really benefit from a concise thesis statement. It jumps around randomly and repeats facts that don't appear to be building a strong case for anything specific. Reading between the lines, it seems like the author believes the guidance document should include more on supply chain water testing, but I don't have enough context to know what reason they think it was not included or why they consider that reasoning to be flawed.

Re: FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

#17

Post by cwillu »

jjk166 wrote: post #16

TFA could really benefit from a concise thesis statement. It jumps around randomly and repeats facts that don't appear to be building a strong case for anything specific. Reading between the lines, it seems like the author believes the guidance document should include more on supply chain water testing, but I don't have enough context to know what reason they think it was not included or why they consider that reason…

The article appears to be trying to smuggle in a notion of “the organism cannot be killed in water” via a path of indirectly repeating the reference that the water cannot kill the organism in the food; because the chemical treatment of the water is therefore insufficient to avoid cross contamination, testing becomes an absolute requirement.

I get real suspicious of ulterior motives whenever such equivocation makes a prominent appearance in an argument.

Re: FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

#18

Post by ButlerianJihad »

cwillu wrote: post #17
jjk166 wrote: post #16

TFA could really benefit from a concise thesis statement. It jumps around randomly and repeats facts that don't appear to be building a strong case for anything specific. Reading between the lines, it seems like the author believes the guidance document should include more on supply chain water testing, but I don't have enough context to know what reason they think it was not included or why they consider that reason…

The article appears to be trying to smuggle in a notion of “the organism cannot be killed in water” via a path of indirectly repeating the reference that the water cannot kill the organism in the food; because the chemical treatment of the water is therefore insufficient to avoid cross contamination, testing becomes an absolute requirement. I get real suspicious of ulterior motives whenever such equivocation makes a…

Sanitizing water won't kill it? Not chlorination?

What is cyclospora, anyway? It is not a bacterium or thing that I am familiar with. It is parasitic; it is a eukaryote; beyond those two definitions, it might as well be an alien from Venus because I'm not familiar.

How does it get into produce? Does it seep inside from irrigation? Fall on it in droplets? Grow inside the vegetables, waiting for human host? Where does it come from?

Just how do you protect from it and mitigate it?

By the way, chopped salads and processed produce isn't typically washed at the destination. It's not a good thing to wash a salad you're just about ready to eat. Once I grabbed a "salad spinner" gadget at the thrift store that was supposed to spin the moisture out of a large volume of salad, but if food service set about washing their already-shredded lettuce, we'd have soggy yucky tacos.

Taylor Farms is a very big player in the produce market. Every salad kit I've ever bought has been either Taylor Farms or a store-brand, and I'd wager most of those store-brands are simply Taylor Farms in disguise. To know they were supplying Taco Bell and other food service... they must be real big.

I picked up salad kits at Target. They say Salinas. I believe they are non-Taylor. But there was plenty of Taylor Farm product on the shelves as well, also professing a Salinas origin. I would suppose that we are still dealing with a chiefly Mexican outbreak, and that Salinas, CA is safe for now?

Re: FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

#19

Post by gs17 »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #18
cwillu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article appears to be trying to smuggle in a notion of “the organism cannot be killed in water” via a path of indirectly repeating the reference that the water cannot kill the organism in the food; because the chemical treatment of the water is therefore insufficient to avoid cross contamination, testing becomes an absolute requirement. I get real suspicious of ulterior motives whenever such equivocation makes a…

Sanitizing water won't kill it? Not chlorination? What is cyclospora, anyway? It is not a bacterium or thing that I am familiar with. It is parasitic; it is a eukaryote; beyond those two definitions, it might as well be an alien from Venus because I'm not familiar. How does it get into produce ? Does it seep inside from irrigation? Fall on it in droplets? Grow inside the vegetables, waiting for human host? Where does…

> What is cyclospora, anyway? It is not a bacterium or thing that I am familiar with. It is parasitic; it is a eukaryote; beyond those two definitions, it might as well be an alien from Venus because I'm not familiar.

It's a protist, which is pretty much "miscellaneous eukaryote".

Re: FDA Admitted in Print That Nothing It Knows of Will Wash Cyclospora Off Lettuce

#20

Post by solid_fuel »

armitron wrote: post #14
solid_fuel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was fine for decades, I wonder what changed. Maybe the republicans did something stupid like putting a bunch of incompetent jackasses in charge.

It wasn't fine for decades. Both democrats and republicans allowed regulatory capture to take place.

Oh yes of course, both sides. That's why there were huge cyclospora outbreaks in 2022. Because of the Democrats.
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