Farmers Pledge Steps to Avoid Contamination of Produce

Article from today's New York Times -- Farmers Pledge Steps to Avoid Contamination of Produce, by Jesse McKinley:

    Amid growing governmental pressure and public concern about an E. coli outbreak
    caused by contaminated spinach, California farmers promised new procedures for
    growing, handling and shipping their produce on Thursday, in hopes of lifting a
    week-old government warning about the crop.

    The guidelines were announced just hours after federal and state health authorities
    met with hundreds of concerned and occasionally angry farmers crammed into a Farm
    Bureau office here to offer their help in ending an agricultural crisis that is estimated
    by trade officials to have already cost the spinach industry $50 million.