Wallace Institute Got It Wrong: CDC Data Does Indicate Higher Risk From Organic And Natural Foods

On February 3rd, 1999, the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture issued a press release ("Contrary to Avery Article, CDC Has Never Conducted Study on Risk of Organic Food") implying that Hudson Senior Fellow Dennis Avery had made a gross error or, worse, fabricated information in an article published in the Fall 1998 issue of American Outlook magazine. The release was sent to publicize an article in the Wallace Institute’s newsletter, Alternative Agriculture News.

The Wallace Institute press release begins, "Contrary to a well-circulated article by Dennis T. Avery, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has never conducted a study that compares the risk of contracting E. coli bacteria in both conventional and organically grown food. . . ." The press release quotes Dr. Mitchell Cohen of the CDC, who says, "The CDC has not conducted any study that compares or quantitates the specific risk for infection with Escherichia coli O157:H7 and eating either conventionally grown or organic/natural foods."

But as the Wallace Institute press release correctly notes, Mr. Avery asserted only the following: "According to recent data compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, people who eat organic and ‘natural’ foods are eight times as likely as the rest of the population to be attacked by a deadly new strain of E. coli bacteria (O157:H7) [emphasis added]." Note that Mr. Avery did not make the assertion the Wallace Institute attributes to him, that the CDC did a study explicitly comparing organic and conventional foods. [Mr. Avery’s article is available for free at http://www.hudson.org/American_Outlook/articles_fa98/avery.htm.

The data that prompted the article was found in a CDC document, "Clusters/Outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 reported to CDC in 1996." We would prefer to send readers to the CDC’s website to view these data directly from the source. Unfortunately, the CDC has not made this information publicly accessible through its website as of February 26, 1999 [http://www.cdc.gov/]. Therefore, we are making the data available here (see table 1).

As the data show, 24 percent of all E. coli O157:H7 infections reported to the CDC in 1996 (118 of 488 total cases) were from organic or natural food sources. In fact, organic and natural foods account for more than a third of all potential foodborne cases (those not attributed to swimming or person-to-person contact). Yet organic and natural foods account for less than 1 percent of the total food supply! If anything, Mr. Avery’s article was overly cautious, vastly understating the apparent risk from organic and natural foods. The article stated only that consumers who eat organic or natural foods had an eight-fold greater risk, when the CDC’s figures show that the risk may in fact be far higher than that. The CDC data is the only data available on which to gauge the risks of E. coli poisoning in our food supply.

Actually, it was a CDC researcher who first alluded to organic food’s potentially higher risk of transmitting foodborne illness. An article on foodborne illnesses, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1997, included the following:

Experts say that increased consumption of organically grown, unprocessed foods produced without synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or preservatives may also be contributing to the problem.

"‘Organic’ means a food is grown in animal manure," noted Robert V. Tauxe, MD, MPH, chief of the CDC’s foodborne and diarrheal diseases branch, at the 36th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, also held in New Orleans.

Studies have found that E coli can survive in cow manure for 70 days and can multiply in foods grown with manure, unless heat or additives such as salt or preservatives are used to kill the microbes.

But there are essentially no regulations related to the use of animal manure in agriculture, said Tauxe, who predicted that oversight of the problem will ultimately be instituted by some government agency.

"We got rid of human waste in our food and water, and I think we’re going to have better control in the future of manure in our food and water," he said.

"Medical News and Perspectives"—January 8, 1997, Journal of the American Medical Association 277:97-98

The current unwillingness of the CDC to discuss or address this information is particularly disturbing. The disproportionately high share of confirmed E. coli O157:H7 cases attributed to organic and natural foods would seem to warrant closer study to enable the appropriate governmental and private institutions to fully protect consumers’ health. Yet Sharon Hoskins of the CDC told Alternative Agriculture News that the CDC did not have any such research currently in the works, nor was it planning to conduct any in the future because such research was "not warranted." "We are not planning any research on organic and natural foods," Hoskins said.

Quotes of Ms. Hoskins in the Wallace Institute press release also imply that she had tried to contact the magazine and the author, presumably to correct Mr. Avery’s "error." She is quoted as saying, "We have tried to contact the magazine and have never been able to speak with anyone at American Outlook, including the editor. There has been no response." In fact, Ms. Hoskins left a single voicemail message, and repeated attempts to contact her over a two-week period were unsuccessful. Ms. Kay Golen, director of media relations at the CDC and Ms. Hoskins’s immediate supervisor, eventually responded to Hudson staff inquiries on February 26. When a Center for Global Food Issues researcher requested that she refer future callers about Mr. Avery’s article to the CDC data on E. coli outbreaks for 1996, Ms. Golen refused, indicating that she needed to look at the issue more closely.

As noted earlier, the CDC data is all that we have on the risks of E. coli 0157:H7 infections inherent in organic and natural foods, and it clearly warrants further study and discussion. It is incumbent upon government agencies and proponents of organic farming to determine for certain whether these foods are more dangerous than conventionally grown meats and produce, and then to publicize the study results widely. We hope that Dennis Avery’s American Outlook article and subsequent discussion will spur that process along.