I imagine the contamination of lettuce happened during the processing stage not the picking stage. I don't see how the lack of cheap farm hands plays a part in this here latest hysteria.

Yep. If you eliminate slave labor or quasi slave labor your forced to innovate. There's an argument that Rome and Greece never experienced an industrial revolution because they utilized slave labor, mechinizing actually risk profits when you have cheap labor.[/quote]

I was the cheap labor ( good for my character) on dairy farms when I was a teenager. They innovated those dairy farms into milk parlors and now hire Mexicans to do the easier work. Probably illegal for farmers to hire teenagers these days and they probably don't have 6 to 10 kids to help run the farm.

The deal is they go to the bathroom in the field and wipe with lettuce leaves then they go back to picking with waste on their hands . Doesn’t matter if they are up here or not that is what happens

Cyclospora is native to sub tropical and tropical areas. Fecal-oral route is how you get it. If you look up outbreaks in the US they invariably are tied to imported produce where field hygiene is questionable, and surface waters that may be used for irrigation are often contaminated with the parasite.

IN the USA farms are required to have traceable produce records on hand. Workers are taught how to wash their hands, toilets and handwashing stations required, and supervisors are watching for rule breakers because no farm can afford causing an outbreak.

Ask this question: Why was Taco Bell buying imported lettuce from Mexico during the US growing season when it could have been a "local" product?

Scarcity of qualified farm field workers! Your typical US welfare recipient wouldn't last out in those fields for even a half day.

That's my take on it. Your views may be different. LOL

I believe your explanation BP but most wont because it doesnt fit their narrative.

What would be your solution?

In Mexico or here, farm workers are spreading these diseases through lack of personal hygiene, it's human crap that spreads it, how do you think it gets there?
Lack of facilities might be part of it, lack of care is another....

quick story...used to lease a barn and pastures for horses..in the barn was a bathroom,,,the lawn service guys would use that bathroom and I didn't care....until I'd go in and have to literally fork up mounds of used toilet paper, nothing was flushed, and no hands were washed...I finally got fed up and called the owner, a white guy...told him if he didn't teach his crew how to crap in America I would lock the bathroom and they can figure out where to go on their own....So, even WITH available facilities, the hygiene wasn't important...and overseers watching to make sure hands get washed?, please...

…. It’s dang near impossible to toilet train Mescins

In most of Mexico waste paper baskets are placed next to toilets for used toilet paper. The septic lines are too small of diameter to handle TP.

If I didn't know what a caring born-again humantarian you really are (deep down) I would say that was an offensive racist comment there compadre.

My solution would inevitably cause road rage on here so I'll just let y'all guess. LOL

Shouldn't be eating all that garbage rabbit food anyways, probably what is making all these folks transgender. Should be eating meat like we're designed to.

At least from what I've seen online with academic folks in the ag extension programs, irrigation with contaminated water seems to be considered the primary but not necessarily only travel route in the large industrial style food producing fields for this particular parasite.. Not that I always believe them or that they are 100% unbiased but I tend to believe that explanation as fairly viable in this case. Michigan still produces a fair amount of fresh vegetable and fruit products (even some lettuce) and there are extensive lists of rules governing harvest. As BP noted, during harvest every field around here is covered with both sex toilets and hand washing stations, etc. And there are specific rules regarding irrigation and harvest timing for surface water versus below ground well water. We also need to keep in mind a good chunk of what is picked up by the consumer in grocery store setting has also been processed in a seperate facility post harvest to get it into a bag/box which in the US means that process is also pretty tightly regulated between state and feds. Not that contamination doesnt happen at that point of contact as it surely can but compared to being processed in a third world crap hole theres gotta be a night and day difference.

Not sure I believe farm field work in US is the only issue at play here though BP. I think its a function of lots of large economic forces on ag in general that squeeze profit margins to a point of no return. I see no shortage of H2A workers all around me in every dairy and every orchard. You will seldom see a local resident or welfare recipient working in fields and I think you might be generous thinking they would even last half a day. I do hear growers complaining about the cost of the H2A program but I hear nothing about not having access to workers. If you are a large industrial ag player it would only make sense to go south of the border to grow and not deal with US prices of production. Thats a smart financial decision on their part. But the country will continue to face a huge issue regarding the security of having both accessible and safe food. Seems we didnt learn much after covid about the integrity of the food supply chain but in many ways that is to be expected as we are many generations into policies designed to push the majority of Americans out of agriculture and into greater value added economic activity---for the post WW2 era that has been into US manufacturing. And that manufacturing made us one of the most wealthy nations the world has ever seen but not without some negatives that we are now experiencing. I'm not smart enough to see a solution ahead.

Don't know what those hombres were eating, but they filled up a waste basket muy pronto, then just dropped it on the floor, and never emptied the basket....let the stupid gringo clean it up!, but the stupid gringo had a padlock....

I was the cheap labor ( good for my character) on dairy farms when I was a teenager. They innovated those dairy farms into milk parlors and now hire Mexicans to do the easier work. Probably illegal for farmers to hire teenagers these days and they probably don't have 6 to 10 kids to help run the farm.
[/quote]

Central American labor was the death of the small dairy farms, now we've turned the country side into a rich persons playground and complain kids don't know how to work.

THIS ^

So..... does washing the lettuce before use eliminate this issue?

There's huge numbers of white people that pick produce by hand and farm in the US.

The nearby Ohio guy who has this channel is doing at least 7 figures in sales, with an entirely white labor force, most of whom are related to him.

https://m.youtube.com/@wishwellfarms

Huge numbers of Amish grow, pick and sell their own produce. I've never seen one who wasn't lily white, though there could be some.

The main reasons many white people don't work on farms is that they can find better work and that there's hordes of brown people doing it.

If given a choice of starving, or hand picking produce, many welfare recipients would pick. The ones who wouldn't, would soon not be a problem anymore.

Keith

sounds pretty dumb if you ask me...

Kind of a modern take on why we should continue the importation and use of foreign wage slaves.

Down here we managed to figure out how to get get our cotton picked without the darkies. I'm sure you'll figure out how to get yours picked without your darkies as well. Let's just hope you dont have to learn it the same hard way we did.