PAICINES, CALIF. — Contaminated spinach that sickened hundreds of people and prompted an unprecedented nationwide recall last fall came from a cattle ranch east of Salinas, according to a report by state and federal investigators released Friday.
The spinach was grown on a 50-acre field owned by Paicines Ranch, which raises about 2,000 head of grass-fed cattle in the San Benito County town of Paicines, according to the report by the California Department of Health Services and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's San Francisco District.
The ranch leases a small amount of cropland to Salinas-based Mission Organics.
Twenty-six samples of feces, soil and surface water at the ranch matched the genetic strain of bacteria in bags of spinach that made people sick.
A Natural Selection Foods packaging plant in San Juan Bautista was the only processor involved, the report says.
Although the long-awaited findings of the joint federal and state investigation point to one California-grown crop and one processing plant, health officials stressed that pathogens in vegetables and fruits are a serious nationwide health problem. Outbreaks of potentially lethal illnesses linked to produce -- particularly leafy greens -- have been growing more frequent and larger in scope in recent years.
Three people, including a toddler, died in the spinach outbreak of last August and September, when 205 illnesses were reported in 26 states. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that about 4,000 people were sickened by the spinach, taking into account that relatively few cases are typically reported.
The contamination probably occurred in the Mission Organics crop before harvest, but it might have spread further during bagging and processing at the Natural Selection plant, according to the investigators.
"No obvious sources for introduction of the pathogen were identified at the processing facility. However, a number of conditions were observed that may have provided opportunities for the spread of pathogens, if pathogens arrived on incoming spinach," the report says.
The same type of pathogen that caused the outbreak, E. coli O157:H7, was discovered in feces, river water and soil at three other spinach farms nearby, suggesting that the bacterium, which originates in cattle, is widespread in the greater Salinas Valley, where much of the nation's produce is grown.
