It is good to see Dania Akkad (a.k.a “lettuce lady”) back on the E. coli beat. She covered the recent grand jury pronouncements (see full article here)
More county money and effort should be spent to detect and prevent potentially fatal strains of E. coli from contaminating local produce, the 2006 Monterey County grand jury recommended.
In the wake of the spinach scare that sickened more than 200 people nationwide in the fall, the grand jury suggested that county supervisors increase funding for the county health department’s Consumer Health Protection Services Division.
The jury’s report, released Tuesday, cited the division’s testing, which monitors irrigation water, agricultural land prone to flooding and produce susceptible to E. coli contamination before harvesting, as essential to the protection of the county’s $3.3 billion agricultural industry.