The Unintended Ecological and Social Impacts of Food Safety Regulations in California's Central Coast Region

Abstract

Forum DANIEL S. KARP, PATRICK BAUR, EDWARD R. ATWILL, KATHRYN DE MASTER, SASHA GENNET, ALASTAIR ILES, JOANNA L. NELSON, AMBER R. SCILIGO, AND CLAIRE KREMEN In 2006, a multistate Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to spinach grown in California’s Central Coast region caused public concerns, catalyzing far-reaching reforms in vegetable production. Industry and government pressured growers to adopt costly new measures to improve food safety, many of which targeted wildlife as a disease vector. In response, many growers fenced fields, lined field edges with wildlife traps and poison, and removed remaining adjacent habitat. Although the efficacy of these and other practices for mitigating pathogen risk have not been thoroughly evaluated, their widespread adoption has substantial consequences for rural livelihoods, biodiversity, and ecological processes. Today, as federal regulators are poised to set mandatory standards for on-farm food safety throughout the United States, major gaps persist in understanding the relationships between farming systems and food safety. Addressing food-safety knowledge gaps and developing effective farming practices are crucial for co-managing agriculture for food production, conservation, and human health. Keywords: agroecosystems, conservation, public health, Escherichia coli O157:H7, pathogen, socioecological system A n Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak in spinach in 2006 sickened hundreds and triggered systemwide reforms to the leafy greens industry (LGMA 2013). Farming practices for fresh produce in California’s Central Coast region (figure 1a), where the outbreak originated, changed markedly in response, leading to a variety of unintended social and ecological impacts. Concern that wildlife vectored the disease led to strong pressure on growers to erect fences, set out wildlife traps and poison, and remove vegetation that might harbor wildlife around their farms. Growers bore the cost not only for preventing wildlife intrusion but also for monitoring contamination, funding self-audits, maintain- ing records, hiring food-safety staff, and forfeiting suspect crops. Research to date has documented the socioecological changes generated by the food-safety reforms in the Central Coast region (Beretti and Stuart 2007, Lowell et al. 2010, Gennet et al. 2013), which can provide insight into what may happen if similar reforms are adopted on farms throughout the United States. Preventing life-threatening illness is a clear public-health priority. Our purpose in discussing the socioecological impacts of on-farm practices for food safety is to advance the conversation on the need for and opportunity to co-manage agricultural, environmental, and public-health objectives in an integrated framework. Here, we briefly discuss the development of US food-safety policy to contextualize how industry, government, and the American public responded to the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak. We then review how and why agricultural practices have changed in the Central Coast region and identify potential externalities of produce- safety reform that deserve further scrutiny. On the basis of insights gained from the Central Coast, we then illustrate more generally how foodborne outbreaks can reverber- ate through socioecological systems. Finally, we suggest a path forward to close important knowledge gaps and move toward an agricultural system that is co-managed for mul- tiple benefits, including food safety; agricultural production of fresh, nutritious food; nature conservation; and ecosystem services. Context for the response to the 2006 E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak Although 2006 marked a turning point for produce-safety reform, produce-related illnesses have been increasing for BioScience 65: 1173–1183. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. doi:10.1093/biosci/biv152 Advance Access publication 25 November 2015 http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org December 2015 / Vol. 65 No. 12 • BioScience 1173 Downloaded from http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on November 25, 2015 The Unintended Ecological and Social Impacts of Food Safety Regulations in California’s Central Coast Region