A California carrot company has initiated a voluntary recall following an E. coli outbreak that has caused at least one death and sickened many others, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Factory farms can increase the likelihood of E. coli and other pathogens, such as salmonella and giardia, contaminating carrots and many other vegetables and fruits. That’s because these dangerous bacteria, commonly found in animal manure, can wash or drift with dust into irrigation waterways whose water is then sprayed on food crops such as carrots.
Following the just-announced recall, EWG identified carrot fields near livestock facilities in California, where many carrots are grown.
In 2022, more than 700 carrot farms in California produced carrots on more than 61,000 acres.
Of those, 36 fields growing carrots on 1,940 acres were located within 1 mile of a factory farm, known as a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO. Within 3 miles of such facilities, EWG found 179 fields growing carrots on 9,663 acres.
The company recalling the carrots is located in Bakersfield, in Kern County. That county has many carrot fields situated near CAFOs. The map below shows the proximity of carrot fields to CAFOs in Kern County.
Figure 1. Kern County CAFOs in blue and fields of carrots crops in orange.
The federal government has failed to adequately protect Americans from harmful exposures to pathogens like E.coli, leaving the food system vulnerable to contamination. For more than 30 years, EWG has worked to expose these threats and push for stronger safeguards to keep families safe. In the absence of effective government oversight, EWG provides science-based resources and analysis to empower people to protect themselves and their loved ones.
Earlier this year, EWG identified California CAFOs very close to water sources used to irrigate fruits and vegetables. We found 2.6 million acres of crop fields in California within 3 miles of at least one such facility, with 1.56 million planted with fruits or vegetables. (More about this research in the section below.)
Of these, 16,500 acres were planted with onions, which were also recently in the news because of an E. coli outbreak.
Open manure storage tanks and feedlots close to an irrigation canal, sometimes only feet away, increase the likelihood that bacteria and other pathogens will wash or blow off feedlots and other CAFOs and end up on produce.
Research shows that pollutants from animal feeding operations can cause respiratory damage in residents up to 4 miles away. So it’s probable that bacteria in manure on cattle feedlots can drift on air currents into fields or waterways up to that distance.
California CAFOs
In California’s Central and Imperial valleys, high density of operations exacerbate the threat.
Most California CAFOs produce cattle, with 911 housing 3 million cows. Many of the remaining CAFOs contain poultry, with 150 facilities housing 73.8 million chickens, ducks and turkeys.
Of those, 986 – almost 93 percent – are located within a mile of canals often used to water crops. And 449, or 42 percent, are within a quarter-mile of such waterways.
EWG looked only at facilities large enough to be considered CAFOs by the federal EPA, and excluded 812 smaller facilities in the Golden State housing an additional 7.5 million animals.
For our reports, EWG experts used data from the California Environmental Protection Agency’s State Water Resources Control Board to identify 1,062 of the state’s CAFOs, which housed nearly 77 million animals, as of 2022.
Protecting the food supply
To address the increased risk of contamination from CAFOs, EWG proposes that the Food and Drug Administration require farmers who use potentially contaminated irrigation water to water their produce to regularly test for pathogens.
Under the Biden and first Trump administrations, FDA food safety efforts have relied on voluntary actions by carrot and other growers, rather than mandatory irrigation water testing and reporting, even when their fields are next to CAFOs.
