From America's produce department, central California, comes a fresh approach to food safety ...

It was from there, in the Salinas Valley, that some spinach, tainted with E. coli, reached the marketplace in 2006, sickening many and killing an elderly woman and an infant boy in distant states before federal officials got around to investigating.

For the victims, it was a personal disaster. For the country, it was a public-health disaster. For the growers, it was a financial disaster; a crisis of credibility.

The growers, knowing their livelihood and a
$3.4 billion area industry were at stake and that their consciences couldn't take another such incident, were quick to act: Rather than wait and hold their collective breath hoping that it wouldn't happen again, they got together and painstakingly put together something called the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement.

Anchoring that agreement, according to an article in the summer edition of the Santa Clara University alumni magazine from that nearby institution, is a mandatory audit system saying California agriculture-department officials will make regular and frequent inspections of the region's farms. That's a forward step from what passes for a federal food-safety system: The Food and Drug Administration tended to look in only once in a decade — and then, the people doing the looking were private contractors.

Ah, private contractors — where did we last hear of them? Oh, yes; last fall and winter, when hundreds of people were stricken by salmonella, and at least nine died, from contaminated peanut butter. When one laboratory serving the regulatory system said its product might be hazardous, the company simply shopped around until it could find a contracting lab that would give it a clean bill of health. Such are the, uh, benefits of privatized governmental functions ...

The californios who've signed onto the marketing agreement recognize government as an indispensable partner in food safety — and they also see the value of self-policing, but really doing it as opposed to talking a good game.

Today, they're carefully separating their fields from grazing animals — and they're fencing off and trapping rodents. They're testing their irrigation water and taking many other precautions learned from sad experience. While they're at it, they're also educating consumers in the need to wash — carefully wash — lettuce, spinach and other leafies, and to take such common-sense precautions as not using the same cutting board for meat and greens.

The reforms aren't perfect — as last week's detection of salmonella in some Southern California alfalfa sprouts might indicate. But the state's public-health department pulled the brand from the shelves, perhaps avoiding any illness — and that's part of the private-public aim. Further preventive measures may be in order.

Still, little by little, the two sectors are regaining consumer confidence. The feds and state governments could do the same down in peanut country by re-acquainting themselves with the need to be trusted with their customers' health.

Nationwide, it'll take a combination of food-safety rules with teeth, renewed corporate concern for reputation, and the longest possible time between health-hazard outbreaks, to restore confidence and recover from economic setbacks. In California, it appears, a model is emerging.

New Mexico's growing dairy industry, among others, should consider following it.