Microbes 101
Cast your memory back to March this year, and you may remember some empty shelves in the supermarket fresh produce section, especially if you were in Queensland or northern NSW. This was due to a major recall of products containing baby spinach.
The recall was triggered by two detections of shiga- toxin E. coli (STEC) in ready-to-eat spinach products. No illnesses were linked to the detection, so there was little media interest.
However, those two detections cost the industry dearly, with losses likely to be in the millions of dollars. These losses extended to completely unrelated growers; with supply stopped for two weeks, many crops were simply abandoned.
So, what is STEC? Was such a recall justified? And what is the risk of something similar happening in our industry?
