Coastside farmers are still selling local spinach

Some farmers, including G. Berta Produce of Half Moon Bay, are continuing to grow and sell spinach, reports the County Times.

"We don’t use fertilizer. We use the old traditional way of cover-cropping, rotating and tilling," said Kim Ramos, who runs the farm with her husband, explaining a millennium-old practice for fertilizing soil naturally. Some fertilizer contains manure, which potentially could be contaminated with E. coli.

"We don’t have a packing plant," Ramos continued, "My husband and I pick the vegetables, we pack them, and within a day or two you are eating them. So they’re not going through a bunch of peoples’ hands."

The real problem may be industrial farming and distribution techniques, which can not only contaminate large quantities of food, but spread it nationwide overnight.