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I don’t know where y’all are, but around here (central Oregon), you can still get spinach. It’s not available in the big grocery stores, but the little farms (most of them “organic”) that you find every 85 feet or so here all sell it.
Since they grew it rather than importing it from a distributor, there’s no more risk to eating it than there ever was, and you can question them about their farming methods. (And don’t assume “organic” == “healthy.” Studies don’t bear that out, and at least a couple have shown that organic greens are much more likely than standard ones to be contaminated with fecal matter. You want greens NOT fertilized with manure, whatever the growth method).
Some of the “co-op” type stores out here sell locally grown spinach as well.
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I belong to a local Community Supported Agriculture program, and we were supposed to get spinach this week. Because of the E. coli scare, they decided not to supply it, even though it’s grown locally and they know their suppliers. Dammit!
I don’t believe you’re right about organic produce being more likely to contain pathogens. Organic growers are not allowed to apply any manure within 90 days of harvest (120 days if the crop touches the soil, as does spinach). Conventional growers are not required to abide by these regulations. Properly composted manure, which is required under organic growing regulations, does not harbor E. coli. This article has a much more complete assessment than I’ve read in other news sources. I know that organic farming is no guarantee of “healthy” food. However, sustainable agricultural practices would really cut down on a lot of these problems. Right now, the “organic” growers in the Salinas Valley are using a lot of factory-farm methods - huge monoculture, questionable sanitation procedures for their field workers, giant factory dairies that feed their cattle grain (making them much, much more likely to harbor acid-resistant E. coli - cite) and have inadequate facilities for dealing with the incredible quantities of manure they produce. The processing facilities used by the company that apparently distributed the contaminated spinach are also a problem, since spinach from one contaminated field is mixed in with the spinach from other fields. We’re seeing the same issues here as we did when the focus was on E. coli-contaminated ground beef from large production facilities. Small, local organic farms are much less likely to have these problems. Of course, there’s some reason to doubt that small, local organic farms are adequate to feed the entire U.S. population, but that’s another thread.
You can kill E. coli by cooking spinach (or any food) to 160 degrees for 15 seconds. The entire mass of spinach has to reach that temperature, so it must be well-mixed. Washing will not get the bacteria off. Unless you’re using it in another well-cooked dish, we’re talking creamed spinach the way Grandma used to make it. Stir-frying is not going to cut it, and it takes frighteningly few bacteria to make a person ill. And don’t forget to disinfect your sinks, pots, pans, and countertops just the way you would if you’d been dealing with raw meat.
