Future Now
The IFTF Blog
More on food safety
It turns out that it has been one year since the outbreak of e. coli from contaminated California-grown spinach led to five deaths nationwide. An article in Friday's USA Today provides an extensive recap of the crisis and its aftermath. Months of investigative efforts by--and cooperation between--FDA and California authorities, and growers, processors, and distributors, eventually narrowed the likely source of the contamination to a 2.8 acre field. According to the news story, Dole, which sold much of the affected packaged spinach, "is implementing a high-tech system that it says will enable it within minutes to track a contaminated bag back to within 30 feet of where the product was grown in the field."
I am intrigued! At IFTF, we have already noticed that Dole is leading the way in making more transparent the origins of its perhaps best-known product, the banana. The company now includes a farm code on each bunch of organic bananas that it sells.
Visit its website, enter the three-digit code, and learn more about the place where your fruit comes from. That's pretty simple stuff. Dole already uses production codes on its bags of leafy greens to trace where and when a product was packaged. I assume that Dole intends to use more sophisticated technology to make tracing the source of contamination easier. According to a recent news report, Dole has implemented a "system for tracking its products from field to store, using radio-frequency identification labels and global positioning satellites." A post on the Motley Fool blog provides more details about Dole's use of RFIDs.
In the mean time, don't use any bags of Dole Hearts Delight salad mix that you may have in your fridge. Dole issued an international recall a few days ago due to-- you guessed it--e. coli contamination.