Eating my words, but not my spinach

To mix some metaphors, I stuck my neck out in my first posting on the E.Coli problem with fresh spinach, and I now seem to be getting some egg on my face. I based my post criticizing the industrial organic food chain on early reports that Earthbound Farms, a very large organic producer, was the focus of the investigation.

There are, as yet, no firm data, let alone firm conclusions on the source of this particular problem, but it is now a non-organic subsidiary of Earthbound Farms that is under scrutiny.

The plausibility of my original thesis, that the industrial organic food chain is vulnerable to such problems, remains strong in my mind. However, this case may well turn out to be about the industrial industrial food chain, and so I stand back from my first post to wait and see.

There was a great discussion on this issue today on WBUR radio's OnPoint program - listen to it here.

While you can, and if you haven't, please go ahead and sponsor Hannah or me for the Hazon 2006 New York Bike ride.

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