Organic Hepatitis Outbreak..​. time to test organic crops?

Certified-organic berries from Costco are being recalled in the United States because they’re tainted with hepatitis. Over 1,200 Canadians are suspected of having purchased this product. But rather than test organic crops in the field for lethal pathogens which are known to result from improperly composted manure, authorities in the United States and Canada will continue to rely on paperwork instead.

 

That’s right folks. Certified organic crops are not tested. They’re not tested to ensure prohibited substances like pesticides are avoided; nor to ensure feces are kept out of the organic food chain, as is the problem in this case.

 

I grew up on an organic farm and worked for five years as an organic inspector. This experience led me to conclude a long time ago that organic crops should be tested BEFORE being admitted into the organic food system.

 

According to medical experts, hepatitis A is often spread from one person to the next by what’s referred to as the “fecal-oral route.” But it can also spread through the use of improperly composted manure on crops. (See “Survival of murine norovirus and hepatitis A virus in different types of manure and biosolids” NCBI, 2010 Aug. 7 (8): 901-6. doi: 10.1089/fpd.2009.0490.)

 

Manure is commonly used as fertilizer in certified-organic production since synthetic alternatives are banned; however, composting manure properly is both time consuming and expensive. A bit strange then that no one in the media is reporting the full story on this food-borne hepatitis outbreak in certified-organic berries.

 

Sure, it MIGHT turn out to be a person-to-person cause; perhaps an employee on the production line with hepatitis who didn’t wash his hands. But if this is the case, where is this person? And how did he infect so much product? Is he still working in the organic industry? And shouldn’t someone with hepatitis not be allowed to work anywhere near food?

 

With this in mind, it becomes even more likely that this contamination resulted from improperly composted manure which would have been spread over an entire field thereby infecting thousands of tons of finished product.

 

A remarkably similar case occurred in Germany three years ago when 44 people died and over 3,700 fell ill after eating E. coli-contaminated certified-organic bean sprouts, hundreds of the survivors requiring kidney dialysis for the rest of their lives. The source of that contamination was never definitively determined, although a nearby cattle operation was suspected of contaminating the water used to sprout the organic beans. This, unfortunately, is how these things often go; they’re never solved satisfactorily.

 

And so, with all of this in mind, isn’t it time to start testing organic crops in the field instead of relying on the scrutiny by federally- accredited private agencies of paperwork and nothing more?

 

The incubation period for hepatitis A – a lethal, lifelong disease for which there is no cure – is between two and six weeks. This means we’re still in the early stages of this outbreak. Many more cases could very well result, and lawsuits are already being filed. And yet, authorities remain silent on the most obvious preventive solution: start testing organic crops for fecal contamination.

 

Defenders of the certified-organic status quo categorically reject the idea of testing organic crops in the field, claiming it will raise the cost of organic food. But the cost of the current paper-based organic-certification system is at least $1,000-a-year per farm. The cost of a “Total Fecal Coliform” test meanwhile is just $20.

 

Mischa Popoff is a former organic farmer and Advanced Organic Farm and Process Inspector. He’s the author of Is it Organic? which you can preview at www.isitorganic.ca.