The recall of bagged fresh spinach due to an outbreak of E. coli bacteria is affecting Colorado farms as well as grocers. Yet customers at local restaurants and supermarkets appeared to the take the warning in stride Monday.
“There’s always a different scare every week,” said Anne Wolper of Denver as she shopped at the Safeway store in Cherry Creek. “This is just the latest one. It will pass.”
Before it does, however, it is likely to have serious consequences for local growers and distributors.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Andy Grant, owner of Wellington-based Grant Family Farm. Organic spinach accounts for about 40 percent of his summer harvest, and August and September are the farm’s peak shipping months.
Supermarkets throughout the state have removed both bagged and bundled spinach, including that from Grant Family Farms, and many restaurants have stopped offering spinach as well.
“If it gets any worse in the next three or four days, spinach is going to take a major hit,” said Lou Daher, senior merchandising manager for Freshpoint Produce of Denver.
The wholesale fruit and vegetable company supplies restaurants and food services companies. It has stopped shipping spinach and salad mix containing spinach to its customers.
Spinach, a nearly $300-million-a-year industry, has been growing with the popularity of packaged salads. While sales of canned spinach have fallen 14 percent, to $34 million, from 2002 to 2005, sales of packaged spinach have risen. Sales rose nearly 36 percent from 2002 to 2005, to $158 million, according to AC Nielsen.
There is some evidence that the tainted spinach originated in California and was distributed by Natural Selection Foods LLC of San Juan Bautista, Calif. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, however, continues to warn against the consumption of all bagged fresh spinach because the outbreak has not yet been isolated to the company.
Grant believes the FDA has been too aggressive.
“It was a broad, irresponsible approach,” he said. “What you need to remember is that the bad spinach came out of a packing shed in California. Ours is grown in Colorado, 1,000 miles away.
“But the FDA came out and told people to throw away all their spinach.”
Companies offering spinach not affected by the recall have still had to shift gears to assuage customer fears.
David Gersenson was set to deliver organic spinach to customers of Door to Door Organics on Friday morning when the phone started ringing.
Customers had gotten wind of the recall and wanted to know whether the spinach his company was about to deliver to their homes was safe.
“We made the decision to yank it” and absorb the loss, Gersenson said.
Customers still lined up at two Denver-area restaurants that specialize in salads. Mad Greens, which has three metro-area locations, and Green Fine Salad Co., with one location in downtown Denver, pulled the spinach and spinach-containing mix from their lines.
Business was down slightly at Mad Greens, but owner Marley Hodgson said it was too soon to attribute the fluctuation to the recall.
At the Cherry Creek Safeway, workers moved other items, including baby carrots, into the space formerly occupied by bagged spinach so the shelves wouldn’t appear empty.
Some customers said they were pleased that the FDA has issued such a broad warning on spinach because the exact source of the outbreak has yet to be identified.
“It’s good that they’re being as aggressive as they are with the recall,” said Jacqueline Gasser, a sales associate at Neiman Marcus in Denver.
Denver Post assistant business editor Linda Castrone and wire services contributed to this report.
Staff writer Kristi Arellano can be reached at 303-954-1902 or karellano@denverpost.com.
Al Día: Para leer este artículo en español. denverpost.com/aldia
Tracking the cases
Where the 114 reported cases of E. coli have occurred:
32 Wisconsin
15 Utah
10 Ohio
8 Indiana
7 New York
6 Kentucky
5 New Mexico, Oregon
4 Idaho,Michigan, Pennsylvania
2 Connecticut, Washington, Maine, Minnesota
1 California, Illinois, Nebraska, Nevada, Virginia, Wyoming
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
$34 MILLION
Sales of canned spinach in 2005,
down 14 percent from 2002
$158 MILLION
Sales of packaged spinach in 2005,
up nearly 36 percent from 2002
