WATSONVILLE — UC President Robert Dynes vowed Friday to look into the possibility of bringing more research scientists to the fields of the Central Coast, where E. coli outbreaks last year are changing the future of farming and the concept of food safety.
On his second day in the area, Dynes learned a little bit more about the powerful strawberry industry here, in which the university has played a crucial role.
A former physicist, Dynes said the solutions to preventing food-borne illness ultimately will lie with better agricultural practices and sound science.
"There's a hysteria and everybody is blaming everybody else," he said. "Sound science is what we need, and right now everybody is confused as to how the strain is being transmitted.
"What's happening is growers and ranchers are look at the circumstances and are coming up with their best guesses on how to prevent it"
Federal and state health officials have traced the source of contamination to four ranches, including Mission Organics in San Benito County, and Wickstrom Ranch just outside Aromas, but Dynes said there is still much to learn about how the unusually potent strain, 0157:H7, is transferred from a field of spinach to the grocery stores.
As part of the tour, Dynes listened to those who have felt the adverse effects of E. coli firsthand: local growers and cattle ranchers under increasing pressure to protect their produce.
Those in the livestock industry — between 2 and 3 percent of the cattle are known to carry the strain — have suddenly found themselves having to set their cattle operations back 800 feet from farmland.
| Growers are considering building fences to keep wildlife out as the cry for answers among buyers and retailers increases with every new report of E. coli contamination, which, in turn, is affecting their bottom line. |
Nearly 60 percent of the world's strawberries come from strawberry breeding and licensing laboratories in the UC system, which has succeeded in creating 33 varieties in California since the late 1970s.
If you thought that the strawberry industry was big in the Pajaro Valley, responsible for providing at least a quarter of the country's strawberries, consider this: the UC System made $5 million in royalties last year, the university's fifth largest revenue generator.
So next time you eat a strawberry, bear in mind that here are subtle differences in tastes in each variety, whether Camarosa, Diamante, Ventana, Albion or Seascape.
But many of them would not have been bred or cross bred had it not been for the pomologists in the UC system, according to Pam Kan-Rice, a spokeswoman for the UC system.
Contact Tom Ragan at tragan@santacruzsentinel.com
