Finger Prints on the Smoking Cow?

Yesterday Tumbledown learned that the FDA and State of California have now confirmed test-positive that samples of cattle feces gathered from a ranch some 2 miles from the farm where contaminated spinach was grown contains E. coli with "matching genetic fingerprints" for the same strain of E.coli O157:H7 that earlier sickened 199 people. Officials continue to caution against jumping to conclusions, but it is becoming more difficult to escape the obvious: the cow did it. With its poop print on the murder weapon, it'll be hard for the defense to make its case. The question for Tumbledown is now whether these were pasture-fed cows (doubtful) or whether they were cows of the grain-fed, manure-lagoon-producing type (more likely). It is encouraging to hear health officials admit that the growing history of "outbreaks linked to leafy greens indicates an ongoing problem," but Tumbledown is not sanguine that our state and federal officials will produce solutions that move beyond technological quick fixes. (See yesterday's post.) Not likely that nature's counterintuitive (to industrial agriculture) and permanent fix--to place more, diverse, animals (and more poop, more widely scattered) on farms that also grow a greater diversity of plants--will attract a following. After all, that would require farmers who are generalists and officials who are localists. And everyone today is a specialist and internationalist. And we like it that way. (Not T.!)