November 20, 2015
CapitalPress.com
Idaho, Oregon onion growers
relieved by FDA’s final produce rule
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
ONTARIO, Ore. — Ida-
ho and Oregon onion grow-
ers say they can live with
the water quality provisions
included in the FDA’s final
produce safety rule, which
was released Nov. 13.
Two years ago, they were
worried the proposed water
quality provisions in FDA’s
originally proposed pro-
duced rule could put them
out of business. But industry
officials said the FDA heard
their concerns and re-wrote
the rule in a way that onion
growers are OK with.
To go from a rule that
would have seriously im-
pacted the economics of the
onion industry “to a rule
that’s livable for us and al-
lows us to stay in business
is a huge victory,” said Kay
Riley, chairman of the Ida-
ho-Eastern Oregon Onion
Committee.
When FDA first proposed
its produce safety rule in
2013, it included water qual-
ity standards limiting how
much generic E. coli bacte-
ria could be present in agri-
cultural water.
If the water didn’t meet
those standards, farmers had
to immediately stop using it.
Virtually none of the surface
water used by onion grow-
ers in Eastern Oregon and
Southwestern Idaho meets
those standards.
The water quality stan-
dards still exist in the final
Sean Ellis/Capital Press
Yellow onions grown in the Treasure Valley area of Idaho and
Oregon are sorted at the JC Watson Co. packing facility in Parma,
Idaho, Sept. 15. Growers say they can live with the water qual-
ity provisions included in the FDA’s final produce safety rule,
which was released Nov. 13.
rule.
But FDA altered them to
allow growers to meet the
standards, even if their water
exceeds the minimum bacte-
ria levels, if they can show
through scientific evidence
that bacteria dies off at a cer-
tain rate from the last day of
irrigation until harvest.
The bulb onions grown
in the region are left in the
field to dry for a few weeks
following harvest. Field tri-
als by Oregon State Univer-
sity researchers have shown
these onions will meet the
so-called die-off provisions.
“The thing that’s great
about it is they actually lis-
tened to us,” Riley said. “I
would deem it a tremendous
victory compared to what it
could have been.”
But the final rule still re-
quires farmers to test their
water annually, even if they
meet the die-off provisions.
Onion growers say the
testing will be costly and
time-consuming and they
hope to be able to skip them.
“They are still going to
require testing and that’s go-
ing to be the hardest thing to
deal with,” said Stuart Reitz,
an OSU cropping systems
extension agent in Ontario.
“The final rule is not ide-
al but it’s not that bad. It’s
one onion growers can live
with.”
Reitz said the industry is
working with FDA to see if
it’s possible an entity such
as an irrigation district could
conduct water quality tests
in canals and have the re-
sults apply to a large group
of farmers.
“That would get each in-
dividual farm out from hav-
ing to do the testing them-
selves,” he said. “We really
need to get some more de-
tails from FDA on what type
of format that would poten-
tially be.”
According to the FDA
rule, farmers may use data
collected by a third party,
such as an irrigation dis-
trict, but the “testing data
may only be shared if there
is no reasonably identifiable
source of likely microbio-
logical contamination be-
tween the sampling sites and
the farms involved.”
Flowering rush expands while regulations delay removal
Diver Andrew Hannes, with
the Army Corps of Engineers
out of Portland, gestures while
searching for flowering rush
on the bottom of the Columbia
River near Umatilla in August
2015.
Irrigation canal-
clogging weed
spreads to new
sites along
Columbia river
E.J. Harris/EO Media Group
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
FDA to explain food safety
rule Dec. 1 in Portland
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
A high-level FDA offi-
cial, along with several of
the agency’s food safety
experts, will explain the
FDA’s new produce rule
Dec. 1 during a meeting in
Portland.
The meeting is being or-
ganized by the Idaho, Ore-
gon and Washington agri-
culture departments and is
meant to shed some light on
the agency’s produce rule
as well as its preventive
controls for human food
rule.
Ag department officials
said they expect a lot of
questions about the produce
safety rule, which was re-
leased Nov. 13 and affects
any farmer who grows fruits
or vegetables that can be
eaten raw.
Michael Taylor, FDA’s
deputy commissioner for
foods and veterinary med-
icine, will attend the meet-
ing, which is expected to
attract a sizable number of
farmers, food processors
and farm group representa-
tives.
“It’s one of those rules
that is of concern to any-
one involved in agriculture
and we are anticipating
there will be a good turn-
out,” said Washington State
Department of Agriculture
Communications Director
Hector Castro.
Questions about the pro-
duce rule will likely focus
on its water quality testing
provisions, said Claudia
Coles, policy adviser of the
WSDA’s food safety divi-
sion.
“The water testing is
... the big issue,” she said.
“There are going to be ques-
tions about (that).”
The meeting will be
held at the Portland Airport
Sheraton Hotel and registra-
tion is not required.
An overview of the pro-
duce safety rule will take
place from 9-11:30 a.m.
and an overview of the
preventive controls for hu-
man food rule will be from
1-2:45 p.m. An additional
question-and-answer period
will follow.
Representatives of the
Idaho-Oregon onion indus-
try will attend the meeting
and their main questions
will center on the agricul-
tural water testing required
by the produce rule, said
Grant Kitamura, chairman
of the Idaho-Eastern Or-
egon Onion Committee’s
promotion committee.
“The water testing is
our main concern,” he said.
“We’ll be looking for clar-
ification on a few things at
the meeting.”
The bulb onions grown
in Southwestern Idaho and
Eastern Oregon are left in
the field to cure and Oregon
State University field trials
have shown bacteria dies off
the onions rapidly during
the curing process.
OSU researchers in On-
tario pumped irrigation wa-
ter filled with mega amounts
of bacteria onto onion fields
but no bacteria was de-
tected on the onions after
curing.
Onion growers still hope
to be exempted from the
water testing requirements
and will be looking for
some guidance from FDA
on that issue, Kitamura
said.
“How necessary is wa-
ter testing if you’ve proven
that curing eliminates any
bacteria?” he said. “It’s go-
ing to be very cumbersome
and expensive (and) we’re
trying not to have to do the
water testing.”
Coles said she also ex-
pects questions about pro-
visions in the rules that re-
quire foreign food imports
to meet the same food safety
requirements.
People are asking, “Are
you truly going to apply
the rule to the foreign food
coming into this country?”
she said.
YEAR-END SAVINGS
Capital Press
Flowering rush, an aquat-
ic weed that clogs irrigation
canals, has spread to multiple
new sites near McNary Dam
along the Columbia River
since its discovery in the area
last year.
Meanwhile, the federal
government must again clear
environmental
regulatory
hurdles before removing new
patches of flowering rush
found growing below the
dam, which is under the juris-
diction of a different region-
al office of the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers.
“Because we’re part of
the federal government, we
have to follow federal laws
and regulations,” said Diana
Fredlund, spokesperson for
the Army Corps’ Portland
District.
Flowering rush was first
found growing on the Oregon
side of the Columbia River in
August 2014, with surveys
eventually locating 15 sites
near McNary Dam.
That portion of the river is
governed by the Walla Wal-
la District of the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, which
had to obtain approval under
the National Environmental
Policy Act, the Endangered
Species Act and the Archeo-
logical Resources Protection
Act to remove the weed with
diver-assisted suction hoses.
“This should be straight-
forward. We’re just going in
and by hand removing some
small sites,” said Tim Butler,
5
Oregon Department of Agri-
culture’s noxious weed pro-
gram manager.
By the time the agency
cleared those hurdles and
scheduled a dive team to yank
the flowering rush patches in
August 2015, the weed had
expanded to 45 total sites in
the area.
While divers were able
to treat 39 of those sites, six
of them were growing on
the Columbia River below
McNary Dam, which means
they come under the purview
of the Army Corps’ Portland
District, said Mark Porter, an
integrated weed management
coordinator for ODA.
For that reason, the pro-
cess of obtaining clearance
under NEPA, ESA and ARPA
must now be repeated by
the agency’s Portland office,
which is unlikely to occur
in time for the patches to be
removed before next year, he
said.
The agency expects that
the regulatory processes
will be completed over win-
ter, when the plants disap-
pear below the water line,
so they can be covered with
mats or removed when they
re-emerge next spring, said
Fredlund.
“We do want it to keep
it from becoming a bigger
problem,” she said.
The Army Corps’ Walla
Walla District can continue
removing the weed with-
out re-clearing regulatory
barriers, and its experience
is expected to speed up the
Portland District’s compli-
ance with those statutes, said
Damian Walter, wildlife biol-
ogist for the agency.
Apart from sites on the
Columbia River, there’s a
large population of flowering
rush upriver on the Yakima
River in Washington, which
state regulators are attempt-
ing to control, he said.
“There is a constant
source currently in the sys-
tem,” Walter said. “We’ve
got to address the source of
it.”
As part of long-term plans
to battle flowering rush,
Washington State University
is studying predatory beetles
in Central Europe that feed
on the weed’s roots in that re-
gion, limiting its spread.
The weed poses a serious
threat if it’s able to enter ir-
rigation systems along the
Columbia River or its tribu-
taries, said Porter. Flowering
rush grows so thickly that it
greatly slows the movement
of water and changes aquatic
ecosystems.
“This plant seems to be a
very aggressive aquatic in-
vader. This isn’t just another
weed,” he said. “it has the big
potential to do some harm.”
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