Shoppers pick local greens to avoid fear factor.

Byline: Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

Last month it was spinach, this week lettuce.

Some produce shoppers were feeling safe if not smug on Tuesday as they bought locally grown salad greens and sidestepped altogether the nationwide supply and distribution chain that helped spread a recent E. coli epidemic to at least 26 states.

"I know I don't have to worry about anything nasty being on my spinach if I buy it here," Jenny Shine of Springfield said after picking up a bag of fresh greens at the Lane County Farmers' Market in Eugene.

Even as the lettuce scare turned into a false alarm and restaurants returned spinach to their menus, customers and growers cited the no-worry factor as a big reason to choose local salad greens.

"I feel safe here, because I know it's locally grown," said Chris Baxley of Eugene, after buying a couple of bags of greens at the Farmers' Market. "It would concern me if I was buying it in the grocery store."

Terra Sorensen, working at the outdoor market's Horton Road Organics booth on Tuesday, said she's still getting questions about the safety of spinach and hears jokes about potential contamination.

But she said most consumers have figured out how to eat safely and still satisfy their salad cravings.

"You just really have to look at where the food comes from," Sorensen said. "The fact you can come (to the Farmers' Market) and talk to the grower about how it was grown should make you feel good about eating it."

Elizabeth Peters, director of communications for the Oregon Restaurant Association, said she's not sure locally grown produce has any safety advantages over nationally distributed products. But she acknowledged that "buying local is very much appreciated (by restaurateurs) from a marketing perspective."

Last month's E. coli outbreak caused three deaths and sickened 200 people in 26 states after fresh baby spinach that had been contaminated by a deadly strain of the bacteria was packaged in California and shipped to stores around the country.

E. coli bacteria originate in the digestive systems of cud-chewing animals and frequently contaminate human foods - whether meats, milk products, fresh produce or unpasteurized juices.

But while most variations of the bacteria can be tolerated by humans without ill effects, some strains are particularly virulent - including E. coli O157:H7, the type that was found in the tainted spinach.

This week's lettuce recall was prompted when a grower in Salinas, Calif., reported finding a high concentration of E. coli in samples of irrigation water that had been used to grow the crop.

But no reports of illness have been linked to the lettuce, and the grower said Tuesday that tests had shown the E. coli bacteria linked to the lettuce was not a deadly strain.

Peters said restaurant owners were relieved when the lettuce scare was caught early - only a small amount was shipped to a single Oregon distributor in Tualatin - and then turned out to be unfounded.

But she said even the spinach problem was taken in stride at restaurants around the state.

"With the spinach, we found a lot of restaurants just temporarily taking it off their menus, or substituting with arugula or other products," Peters said. "With most of them, (the spinach) is back - that's the word that I've heard."

At the Farmers' Market, Tuesday's sentiment was that reactions to bacterial outbreaks can sometimes result in less-healthy foods if growers and regulatory agencies attempt to ensure bacteria-free products.

"Would you rather have a little bit of bacteria, or do you want the chemicals that are going to stay in your body?" said Richard Wilen, owner of Hayhurst Valley Organic Farm & Nursery.

Farmers' Market customer Juanita Hedrick of Springfield said that she believes that the chlorine that is sometimes used by large distributors to sanitize their products is more harmful than the bugs it is intended to destroy.

"It's hard to build your immune system when you're eating things that have been dipped in chlorine, which strips the good bacteria from them," Hedrick said.

"This idea that we're going to sterilize all our food ... is just not right."

Joe Mosley can be reached at 338-2384 or jmosley@ guardnet.com.