ANR news blog

Salmonella rears its ugly head in California

Bad news for pistachio farmers, processors and consumers alike - yesterday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended that consumers avoid eating pistachios and products made from pistachios because of reports of Salmonella contamination. The story was reported in numerous media outlets, including US News & World Report.

The contamination came to light when Kraft Foods "Back to Nature" trail mix was found to be tainted with Salmonella. Kraft traced the contamination to Setton Pistachio in Terra Bella, Calif. The company immediately stopped distributing pistachios and is recalling about 1 million pounds of roasted in-shell nuts, according to an FDA news release.

Also yesterday, the Sacramento Bee reported that state and federal health officials are investigating a Bay Area company whose spice products have been linked to a recent outbreak of Salmonella in 15 California counties. Bee writers Niesha Lofing and Darrell Smith spoke to UC Davis Cooperative Extension food safety specialist Linda Harris about the recent spate of Salmonella scares. She said Salmonella bacteria can survive in dry goods such as spices and dog treats

"It's true that to multiply, (bacteria) need warmth and moisture and nutrients," Harris was quoted. "But what most people don't recognize is when you don't have enough moisture, bacteria can survive. … Salmonella is well-known for surviving in dry foods."

Salmonella enteritidis.

Bees were busy in 2008

California bees got busy last year, producing 35 percent more honey than they did in 2007, according to an article in the Sacramento Bee over the weekend. The bee story cited USDA figures.

Despite the good news, the nation's beekeepers aren't out of the woods. Cases of what has been called Colony Collaspe Disorder are still reported, "but in most cases, here (in California), things are better," the story quoted UC Davis entomologist Eric Mussen.

Researchers are still trying to figure out what caused bees to abandon hives en masse two years ago, when honey production fell to its lowest point in 20 years.

Another factor that boosted honey production in 2008 was a strong market for honey - with the price up 37 percent to $1.41 a pound in California. The market likely drove some beekeepers to focus on honey production rather than hiring their hives out to farmers to pollinate crops, wrote Bee reporter Jim Downing.

Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey

A good word about climate change

I can't resist a story that places any good light on climate change. It gives me hope for my children and children's children. One example, covered by the Times Online of the United Kingdom a few years ago, was a report that residents of Greenland will now be able to grow their own vegetables, rather than import everything from Europe, because of warmer, shorter winters.

A second story on climate change the involves a bit of good news for California appeared in the Stockton Record last week. The story said efforts to battle climate change will likely mean more jobs and better-looking forests in coming decades on the wooded slopes surrounding Sierra Nevada towns.

Reporter Dana Nichols wrote that more intensive management of forests, including thinning underbrush, can speed tree growth and prevent catastrophic wildfires, thus locking up more carbon in wood and keeping it out of the atmosphere. And keeping carbon out of the atmosphere is about to become a paying proposition, thanks to state and federal efforts to set up carbon trading markets and place limits on carbon emissions.

There are additional potential benefits associated with more intensive forest management. Small-diameter forest materials could conceivably be burned in power plants. However, the cost to produce electricity from wood waste in California is currently too high to make such plants competitive with plants that use "dirty" fuels, such as coal and gas.

But it works in Europe. Biomass plants and the electricity they produce are one of the fastest and most effective ways to use forests to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to various experts and studies, the Record story said.

"That, interestingly, is where the Europeans have said is the biggest change," the reporter quoted Bill Stewart, UC Cooperative Extension forestry and fire specialist.

Easy access to fast foods makes kids fat

A new UC Berkeley study that is getting lots of media attention notes that the incidence of obesity in high school students is greater when there is a fast food restaurant within 530 feet of the campus. Nearby fast food resulted in a 5.2 percent increase in the incidence of student obesity compared with the average for California youths, according to coverage in the Los Angeles Times. Scientists said the correlation is "sizable."

Reporter Jerry Hirsch sought comment from the nutrition, family and consumer sciences advisor for UC Cooperative Extension in Los Angeles County, Brenda Roche. She said she wasn't surprised by the findings.

"If you put a McDonald's in front of a school, kids will eat there," she said. "Obesity is as much a factor of environment as it is a matter of choice."

Other media outlets that covered the story included:

• ABC Channel 7 news
• Reuters
• Gulf Times

In the Reuters story, a spokeswomen for the National Retail Federation, Ellen Davis, rejected the idea that schools be surrounded by a fast food-free zone.

"I think it would be a dangerous precedent to limit the types of legitimate, important businesses and where they're located in a city. Doesn't it make more sense for parents to limit a child's allowance or let them know when and where they can't eat certain things?" she was quoted.

Perhaps parents, schools, government and food purveyors should all be part of the effort to curb obesity.

What is clear, costly and complicated? Water

While there have been whispers of skepticism about the Great California Drought of 2009, all would likely agree that California's water woes are complicated. The Wall Street Journal today ran a story outlining the decision process for farmers considering whether they should use the water allocated to them to grow crops, or whether they should sell the water to the state and let their land lie fallow.

Writer Pete Sanders penciled out the equation for Don Bransford, who grows rice on a 700-acre farm north of Sacramento:

• The state is offering $275 per acre foot of water
• Take 100 acres of his farm out of production.
• Sell the water for $90,000

To me, that sounds like a lot of money for leaving one-seventh of a farm unworked. But the implications go far beyond Bransford's farm - think of the laborers who won't be working and the inputs that won't be applied. That's the type of information that UC Davis agricultural economist Richard Howitt has taken into consideration in his calculations about the cost of the drought.

Sanders noted in the Wall Street Journal article that Howitt has determined the drought and resulting water restrictions could cost as much as $1.4 billion in lost income and about 53,000 lost jobs, mostly in the agriculture sector.

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