Spinach contamination should prompt questions to Republicans

The E.coli outbreak on spinach this week should prompt some tough questions for the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate Republicans. Why? One of the most likely sources of this outbreak was irrigation with water contaminated with manure.

Does that sound familiar? It should.

This post from Xoff in early August alerted everyone to a news story that was receiving little attention. The Senate and Assembly Agriculture Committees heard hours of testimony about a proposed rule from the Department of Natural Resources that would prevent big agribusinesses from spreading manure on frozen ground. The testimony included this:

The testimony of the young father before the Senate and Assembly Agriculture Committees was dramatic and heart-wrenching. Two years ago he got up from his dinner table and went to the kitchen faucet to pour a glass of water. Out of the tap came manure laced water. Panic set in as he thought about the fact that the meal that had just been eaten by his wife and their three young daughters had been prepared with water form that faucet.

Four days later Scott Treml picked his six and one-half month daughter Samantha out of her crib, seriously ill and covered in feces and vomit and rushed her to the emergency room. He and his wife Judy were told that there was a good chance that their daughter could die or suffer severe brain damage. Thankfully she recovered. The next day, daughters Kaitlyn (8) and Emily (6) become seriously ill, another day later his wife and three days later he becomes seriously ill. The whole family eventually recovered.

When agribusinesses spread manure on frozen ground, it ends up in a lot of places other than the field they are trying to fertilize. Sometimes it comes out of your tap, and sometimes it ends up contaminating water that will be used to irrigate fields. Even when the ground is not frozen, manure spreading has to be done carefully so it doesn't run off into area water that will be consumed or used for irrigation.

If we don't want to see more outbreaks like the one we just had with the spinach, we need to pass the types of rules that the Republicans in the state legislature turned down this year.