Sanitizing Agriculture

There are some factual errors in the article, like this gem: "The deadly bug first appeared in hamburger meat in the early 1980s"

E. coli has been around approximately forever, so I don't know what the hell they were thinking when they wrote that. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli

However, they do make some valid points. One of them is the bit about wildlife being killed off in pursuit of food safety. The Salinas Valley is essentially a dead zone for birds at this point, as they're seen as a disease vector for food. This is a far cry from the direction agriculture had been taking prior to the spinach scare, which was towards organic and sustainable agriculture.

Secondly, they do mention the feral pig vector (just Google for "feral pig e coli"). California has some fairly ridiculous ideas about feral pigs, among them being the requirement that people purchase a pig tag to kill them ($19.70 each, plus $41.20 for the hunting license). This is absurd, given that they're one of the most destructive invasive species in existence. If they really are a vector for the spread of E. coli (which is easy to imagine... there are millions of feral pigs in California, and especially around the Salinas Valley), there should be a bounty on them, not a fee. There are depredation permits available, but they're not in widespread enough use to make a dent (and I know farmers who have killed hundreds of pigs in a year, on a single plot, with a depredation permit and one rifle).

And, yes, I realize the two above paragraphs may sound contradictory. There's a difference between trying to enable sustainable agriculture and letting invasive species spread unchecked. As it stands, California is getting the worst of both worlds.