If you are a regular reader of health related news, you must have heard much about the outbreaks that rocked the food industry in the country in few of the last months. And to curb such future possibilities of these deadly outbreaks, the government and the produce industry are focusing to make leafy greens safer before the spring planting season. It is believed that the new guidelines that are due from the industry in April would help to maintain more resistance upon these outbreaks. It will also tell how to prevent contamination throughout the food chain–from before green leafs are planted until they reach the dinner table.

The outbreaks had put many questions on the regulations that the government has put on health organizations, and the food industry itself. No wonder that members of Congress have already asked federal agencies to report on what went wrong and how to fix the problem. Again, it should be noted that many advocated to replace the patchwork system of federal food regulation with a single agency in charge of what people eat, during those troubled times of these outbreaks–it appeared at that time, that whatever you eat at the restaurants might be contaminated–such was the impact of those outbreaks.

The first outbreak of such kind was noticed in the spinach–it killed three people and sickened more than 200. Another outbreak noticing E. coli in lettuce sickened dozens of people who ate at East Coast Taco Bell outlets and Midwest Taco John’s restaurants in November and December. In between these were two salmonella outbreaks, which was noticed in tomatoes and made around 400 people sick in October and November.

The goal of the efforts that the produce industry and the government is indulging in is to tell farmers, before spring planting, and then consumers about the new safety guidelines, which will ensure that they are not hit by such outbreaks.