Sprouts are healthy, but are they safe?

Byline: THE HEALTH FILES by Tim Christie The Register-Guard

A SMALL WHITE TAG ON the side of alfalfa sprout containers sold at Trader Joe's is enough to give pause to any health-minded shopper:

"The FDA advises that persons who wish to reduce the risk of foodborne illness should not eat raw sprouts," the tag reads.

Alfalfa, broccoli, radish, clover sprouts - those green, crunchy, squiggly little plants piled on sandwiches and salads - carry a strange, perhaps unique spot in the world of food: They're touted as a super-nutritious health food with disease-fighting powers, yet are blamed for sickening thousands of people in the United States since 1995.

That weird dichotomy has set off an ongoing battle between public health officials, who keep issuing warnings about sprouts, and the sprout industry, which believes that it's being picked on by overzealous regulators who don't recognize the steps taken in recent years to make sprouts safer.

Dr. Paul Cieslak, an epidemiologist and manager of Oregon Health Services' communicable disease program, says flatly: "I think it's one of the most hazardous produce items out there."

He and other public officials have good reason to be concerned: Sprouts have been blamed for at least 15 salmonella outbreaks and two E. coli outbreaks since 1995 that have sickened thousands of people, according to health authorities. Oregon was hit with outbreaks in 1995 and 1999.

Greg Lynn, a veteran sprouter from Washington state who is chairman of the marketing and food safety committees for the International Sprout Growers Association, is tired of "sprout-bashing" by public health agencies.

"They have good intentions, but their approach is really heavy-handed, and it has hurt the industry," he said.

Just last month, the Centers for Disease Control published an article in its weekly bulletin for public health officials warning of the dangers of sprouts. The article reported on a salmonella outbreak last spring in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico in which 32 people were sickened from eating tainted alfalfa sprouts.

Disease detectives traced the outbreak to a single sprout producer in California. They concluded that the sprouter didn't follow recommended procedures for sanitizing seeds.

The CDC study repeated a recommendation made in 1999 by the Food and Drug Administration: The very young, the very old and people with weak immune systems should stay away from sprouts. And people who choose to indulge should cook their alfalfa sprouts before eating them. Cooking is sure to kill any bacteria that might exist, but also turn the tender green sprouts into a lifeless puddle of goo, sprout growers say.

The CDC report and the cooking recommendation, prompted an outraged response by the sprout industry.

"The CDC report is another in a series of sprout-bashing that's being done by health and regulatory officials that are aimed at killing the industry," Lynn said.

Sprouting took off as a health-food fad in the 1970s. Today, about 450 sprout growers and processors annually generate about 600 million pounds of sprouts and $250 million in sales in the United States, according to Food Quality magazine.

Industry officials say sprouts are a great source of protein and Vitamin C. They say recent research has shown that sprouts may help the body fight off cancer and other diseases.

"It's raw, fresh food that contains lots of favorable and neutral bacteria," Lynn said. "You're getting a living food ... and good bacteria you need to maintain a healthy immune system."

The outbreaks during the 1990s - and the resulting public health warnings about sprouts - have hammered the industry, Lynn said.

"It's killing us," he said.

A 1999 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association - co-authored by several Oregon public health officials - cost the industry $25 million in sales, he said. Several sprouters have gone out of business.

"The industry has yet to recover from that article," he said.

Growers get seeds from all over the world, and scientists believe that dirty seeds are responsible for the outbreaks. Potential culprits in contamination of seeds include use of animal manure for fertilizer, dirty irrigation water, runoff from animal production facilities, or dirty harvesting or processing machines.

The water, warmth and air used in the sprouting process offers the perfect conditions for explosive growth of those bacteria.

"Even a miniscule number of salmonella present on a seed before sprouting could lead to huge numbers of salmonella being present on the sprout," Cieslak said.

Lynn said the industry has taken significant steps since the spate of outbreaks in the mid-1990s to improve the safety of sprouts. Many sprouters are now following two key guidelines recommended by the FDA.

The first calls for soaking seeds in a bleach solution - a method that has turned off organic food enthusiasts. Public health officials say that's not 100 percent effective in killing bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli, however, because the surfaces of some seeds are cracked, providing hiding places for bacteria the bleach solution won't kill.

The second step involves testing the water used to irrigate every batch of seeds. After 48 hours of growth, growers sample and lab-test the irrigation water to see if it contains salmonella or E. coli bacteria. Only when test results come back negative are the sprouts shipped to market.

Since most growers have adopted those guidelines, the number of outbreaks has declined, the industry says.

The outbreak documented in the CDC report was the result of a grower following a faulty method of testing the irrigation water, Lynn said.

"The industry learns and moves on," he says. "Keep in mind we're young and new and small and not able to finance a lot of the research we need to produce safer products."

He said when grown by a responsible, conscientious producer who follows the FDA guidelines, there's a "99.999 percent chance those sprouts are safe to eat."

Public health officials remain wary.

Cieslak, the state epidemiologist, says the "vast majority of people" who eat sprouts won't get sick. And there are more dangerous foods to eat, such as raw oysters, he said.

"Some people can do it," he says. "In our society we don't tell them they cannot."

And Cieslak is optimistic that sprouts can be made safer through new technologies.

Tim Christie covers health and medical issues. Call 338-2572 or e-mail [e-mail].