Fresh Ideas: Guilt by association takes toll

These are not easy times for cantaloupe growers.

Each time there’s an outbreak of illness associated with cantaloupe, the entire industry suffers.

When the most recent involving cantaloupe grown at Chamberlain Farm in Indiana that sickened more than 200 in 22 states made news, growers in Rocky Ford, Colo., were just getting into their season. Still reeling from last year’s deadly listeria outbreak from cantaloupe harvested at Jensen Farms 90 miles away in Holly, Colo., they had adopted new safety standards, planted a substantially smaller crop and were sending melons to market when the Indiana outbreak hit.

Michael Hirakata, a grower and president of the newly formed Rocky Ford Growers Association, said sales had been going well and that they were getting close to being sold out in spite of the situation in Indiana.

“We feel bad for everybody involved,” he said. “We’re just plugging away, reinforcing the message that we have done everything we can to make sure something like this isn’t going to happen here again.”

In California, which grows 60 percent of the nation’s cantaloupes, job one for Steve Patricio is getting the word out about the marketing order growers there have adopted and California cantaloupe growing conditions in general. A grower, president of Westside Produce and president of the California Cantaloupe Advisory Board, Patricio said California’s never had a contaminated melon outbreak and that most safety issues arise in handling — which in California, is minimal.

“California is unique with low humidity, low moisture — there aren’t some of these issues that are going on in other climates,” he said.

And most California cantaloupe are field packed, limiting opportunities for contamination, he added. Not so in the Jensen Farms case, he said, describing a process by which bacteria from dirty water used to rinse cantaloupe got onto rollers used on the drying side.

The whole thing has been frustrating.

“I spend probably 80 percent of my day talking to members, talking to members of the press, trying to dissuade hysteria,” he said.

In fact, California melons are going to start bearing stickers identifying them as such — for that reason.

“It’s getting the message out to consumers, out to the trade, to buy California: these are California, and we’re doing what’s right.”

                                                                 –Kathy Gibbons, Editorial Director