As leafy greens growers in Arizona and California widen buffer zones between their fields and cattle operations, a web seminar seeks to inform growers about how livestock facilities are managed.
Western Growers and California Cattlemen’s Association are partnering for a one-hour web seminar at 11:30 a.m. Pacific Oct. 10.
“With recent attention on the nexus between livestock and fresh produce operations, many questions have arisen about how these facilities are managed, the environmental controls surrounding these operations and some best practices to protect growing regions,” according to a Western Growers news release on the event.
Justin Oldfield, vice president of government relations at the California Cattlemen’s Association, and Jesse Larios, manager at Foster Feed Yard, Brawley, Calif., will “de-mystify what goes on inside a cattle feeding operation and explain their interest in being good neighbors,” according to the Western Growers release. They’ll also answer questions from participants.
Registration, which closes at the end of the business day Oct. 8, is available online.
Registration is free for Western Growers members and $100 for non-members.
Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigators looking into the cause of an E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Ariz., this year were unable to find a specific cause of the outbreak. They did, however, find the same strain of E. coli in an irrigation canal used on fields in the area. A part of that canal is near a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) that has more than 100,000 head of cattle at times.
In September, the Arizona Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement tripled the required distance from a CAFO to a leafy greens operation from 400 to 1,200 feet. In late September, the California Leafy Green Agreement did the same, but increased the mandatory buffer to a mile for operations of 80,000 heads of cattle or more.
