Consumers are still avoiding greens and questioning safety issues, months after spinach contaminated with E. coli killed three people and made nearly 200 sick, a new U.S. survey suggests.

The U.S. telephone survey of 1,200 people was conducted by the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers over three weeks in November and was expected to be released Monday. The sampling margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a warning on Sept. 15, 2006, advising people not to eat fresh spinach imported from the United States.
(CBC)

The survey suggests that the broad recall could have lasting effects on spinach and other similar vegetables. As a result, consumers felt uncertain and threw away other bagged produce that was not affected by the recall, it indicates.

William K. Hallman, director of the institute, called the September spinach recall — and the E. coli contamination at Taco Bell restaurants on the East Coast three months later — a "signal event" in the public's perception of food safety.

The survey was conducted more than six weeks after the spinach recall but before the Taco Bell outbreak.

"Consumers' expectations were violated by the fact that a product they thought was clean and wholesome turned out to be something they did not expect," he said. "It raises questions about other produce that are grown in the same way."

Plummeting spinach sales have also prompted the produce industry to seek federal assistance to assure buyers that fresh produce is safe.

"We need to be in front of this to maintain consumer confidence," said Tom Stenzel, president of the United Fresh Produce Association, a leading trade group. "Consumers need to eat fresh produce and feel safe in their choices."

The survey suggests nearly nine out of 10 consumers said they heard about the recall, but nearly one in three didn't know the recall was over when the survey was taken.

About one in five who were aware of the recall also stopped eating other bagged produce, and seven per cent threw out fresh produce other than spinach during the recall. More than 75 per cent of respondents with spinach in their home threw it out.

More than half of the people who ate spinach before the recall hadn't returned to eating it when the survey was taken.

Recall caused confusion

Uncertainty from the inability to quickly pinpoint the source of the contamination and the broad nature of the recall caused confusion, Hallman said.

U.S. sales figures through Dec. 23 from 16,000 conventional supermarkets, not including big-box stores such as Wal-Mart or Costco, showed an overall 14 per cent drop in spinach sales from a year ago, according to the Perishables Group.

Bulk spinach dropped by nearly half and even packaged salad without spinach dropped about 10 per cent.

One explanation for the drop is limited supply, depleted after the recall, said Steve Lutz, executive vice-president of the Perishables Group.

Investigators confirmed last year that the E. coli strain O157:H7 was present in the contaminated spinach. The O157:H7 strain, a deadly form of the bacteria, contaminated water in Walkerton, Ont., in 2000, killing seven people.

E. coli, or Escherichia coli, is commonly found in human and animal intestines.