Food Safety: Recent Cyclosporiasis Outbreak and What We Do to Keep You Safe

I wanted to take a minute to address the recent foodborne illness outbreak in the US- cyclosporiasis.  

This particular illness is caused by a parasite that cannot be washed off of foods.  Its only source is pretty gross, being that it is human feces.  How does this wind up in our food?  Well, in a few ways, that mostly revolve around very large industrial-sized farms.  Contaminated irrigation or wash water can vector the parasite to our food. Terrible working conditions for mostly immigrant farm labor can result in little to no access to toilets or bathroom breaks (meaning workers defecate in the growing fields; the same type of human rights violations are commonplace in American industrial meat processing facilities). Furthermore, the use of human biosolids as fertilizer can also be a vector for contamination (and yes, this byproduct of sewage treatment plants is commonly spread on farmlands as fertilizer known by the nickname "Boston beans").   

While you can't wash the parasite away if it has contaminated the food, cooking it to 158 degrees kills the pathogen.  You can also avoid the risk of contaminated foods by supporting small, local farms.  Why would that help?  Well... small farms oftentimes have much better working conditions vs. large-scale industrial farms that exploit immigrant labor.  Farmworker sanitation is a huge concern at large factory farms and meat processing plants- supporting small farms where you know the farmer isn't engaged in those types of practices is a sure-fire way to feel more confident that no one is pooping on your food!  The main culprit behind this outbreak is allegedly Taylor Farms- a giant behemoth that supplies nearly 1/3 of all salads sold in the US and Canada.  That's a LOT of lettuce, reaching a LOT of people, with a huge footprint for potential harm.  

How Unbound Glory works to keep you safe:

Here at Unbound Glory Farm, we engage in the highest level of safe practices when it comes to food growing, washing, and handling.  For one, we only irrigate with well water, and we are located on a hill that is in no danger of flooding from nearby streams.  Our regenerative practices help create a healthy soil microbiome, where natural pathogens in the soil are held in check by healthy microbes. A microbiome with more good vs. bad bacteria/fungi creates better balance in the growing medium leading to less risk of pathogenic proliferation.   Also, our no-till practice helps avoid anaerobic conditions that heavy plows can create beneath the surface- conditions that can tilt the balance toward pathogenic proliferation (not good!).   

We wash all your produce with well water that is tested annually and certified by the health department as coliform-bacteria-free ...not all farms do this, but it is a requirement for our pizza/food license and a happy byproduct is the water we use to wash your produce is safer as a result.   Also, Adam and I have spent our entire professional lives working in the food industry, gaining years of food safety training and oversight experience with multi-million-dollar food businesses. We are both trained as certified food-safe managers and keep up on our certifications necessary for our pizza license.  Food safety is always our top priority here, and since we understand the extreme dangers of unsafe practices, we wash and sanitize every surface your produce comes into contact with, from the moment we pluck it from the fields, to the table/sink we wash it on, all the way until it is packaged and packed in your bag to take home!   We are also obsessive hand-washers and our whole crew is trained to be as well...   

We try to get our produce as clean as possible for you, but not everything gets washed before packing (such as squash, peppers, tomatoes, cukes, some tender herbs, etc.) so it is always a best practice to wash your produce at home, scrubbing any residual dirt off of roots, and washing anything we don't label as "prewashed" or "ready to eat."    We hope that this brief rundown of the current outbreak makes you feel more confident about how to stay safe.  One of the reasons we do what we do is to fight back against the industrial food system and give us all a better, safer, more delicious and healthier way to eat.    

As always, thank you for letting us feed you!