Water treatment applied to help food safety concern

With the largest E. Coli outbreak in the country earlier this year, farmers are doing everything they can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed the course of the E. Coli outbreak was from irrigation canal water in Yuma.

13 On Your Side spoke with a local Agronomist who tells us about a new product that farmers in our area are using more of. They are focusing on adapting this product because of the recent food safety concerns.

“What we are standing in front of right now is a trailer equipped with a water treatment unit,” agronomist, Nate Dorsey said. “This is intended to treat irrigation water before it goes out into a field with crops,” he added. “They have pipes that go into the irrigation canal, then suck the water into the pump and then push it out into the pipes that are in the field,” Dorsey explained. “This unit right here basically plugs into the pump and will cycle water treatment chemicals into the water to treat water for anything that might be in there like bacteria and viruses to hopefully prevent any food safety issues,” he said.

This water treatment unit uses calcium hypochlorite, a chemical similar to what is used in backyard pools. The unit uses a chemical that doesn’t have salt in it so that when it pushes the water out into the field it doesn’t cause any issues with lettuce or other produce that are really sensitive to salt.

This is just one way the local agriculture community is trying to take extra precaution in keeping our food safe.