REQUEST FOR SIGNAGE RE: UNPASTEURIZED JUICE IN SARATOGA, CA

Tuesday, June 29, 2025

Mayor Jim Shaw
City of Saratoga
13777 Fruitvale Ave.
Saratoga, CA 95070

cc:
Members of the Planning Commission, City of Saratoga
James Walgren, Director of Community Development, City of Saratoga
Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County Department of Health
Dr. Jeff Farrar, California State Food and Drug Branch
Dr. Morris Potter, Director of the Food Safety Initiative, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition,
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Steve "the gatekeeper" Marko, Manager of Quality Control, Jamba Juice

RE: Request for Signage

Dear Mayor Shaw,

My name is Laurie Girand, and I am the mother of a child who was poisoned by Odwalla apple juice in the fall of 1996. My daughter was hospitalized under increasingly critical condition because an organism, E. coli O157:H7, had put a toxin into her bloodstream. She received two and a half transfusions and was at death's doorstep before recovering. In the outbreak of which she was a part, 70 cases were identified, approximately half of which were children 5 and under, 14 children were hospitalized with life threatening complications, and 1 toddler died.

What I was shocked to learn after her illness was that government officials and members of the unpasteurized juice industry were aware that this type of outbreak might recur in the United States and had done nothing to inform consumers. It struck me as heinous that our family was seduced into believing marketing slogans such as "Drink it and thrive" when we learned that the reality was that unpasteurized juices carry a risk factor that largely outweighs any nutritional or health benefits to children, pregnant women, seniors and the immune impaired. This is particularly frightening because these groups are frequently actively seeking better nutrition and better health.

Because of my outrage, I joined an organization called S.T.O.P. -- Safe Tables Our Priority as an Advisory Board Member. At S.T.O.P., I am responsible for interacting with the government on juice related issues. I have written extensive public comments citing references to juice science to support the position that consumers deserve to know the same facts that government and industry know.

What Has FDA Done About Unpasteurized Juices?

Since the fall of 1996, when three separate outbreaks were identified in unpasteurized apple juice, FDA has stated that children, the elderly and the immune impaired should not drink unpasteurized juices. They have mandated that unpasteurized juices sold in "packages" post a placard with specific warning label language if they go unpasteurized or equivalently treated. Apple juice was required to post this placard by last September, and all other similarly untreated juices will be required to post this placard by next week. Actual labeling on the package will be required starting this September. The warning label is reasonably specific. It says:

WARNING: This product has not been pasteurized and therefore may contain harmful bacteria that can cause serious illness in children, the elderly, and persons with weakened immune systems.

Unfortunately, FDA has not taken action to place warnings where consumers can see them in restaurants and juice bars, even though the juice sold at these locations carries risks. In a sampling of Florida locations over the last couple of years,1 5% of retail establishments figured prominently as sources of contaminated, unpasteurized orange juice. Indeed, looking at unpasteurized juice outbreaks identified over the last 10 years, at least three and possibly four of the outbreaks occurred in restaurant environments (see Appendix A)

FDA's rationale for excluding these areas from requiring warning labels ranges from "we've never traced an outbreak directly to a juice bar before" to that it was a policy consistent "with the agency's food labeling regulations which do not apply to food distributed to consumers in unpackaged form unless specifically noted in the regulations."2 In short, the government is aware that if a grocery store sold unpasteurized orange juice in a bottle, that bottle would have to bear a warning label, but if it sold the exact same juice in the exact same quantity in a cup , the cup would not bear a label, despite the fact that the risk would be identical.

Difficulty of Making Safe, Unpasteurized Juice

The trouble is that it is very challenging to make unpasteurized juice safely. The challenge is composed of several factors. In many outbreaks, the fruit going into the process was contaminated with fecal organisms (see Appendix A). In the case of apple juice, the organism most often associated with the juice is E. coli O157:H7, which is harbored in the intestines of ruminants such as cattle or deer. In the case of orange juice, it is Salmonella, which is harbored in the intestines of poultry. In outbreaks caused by these organisms, contamination is often caused by animal fertilizer or animal droppings coming into contact with the fruit. Note that the fruit does not have to fall onto the ground. Studies are now revealing that flies can carry organisms from feces to the fruit.3 In the single reported case of unpasteurized carrot juice, the organism was C. botulinum, which causes botulism. It is a soil borne organism, which would come into contact with carrots because they are grown in the soil.

Most foodborne organisms are considered to be increasingly virulent. Salmonella is developing antibiotic resistance. E. coli O157:H7 does not respond to any known antibiotics. In both cases, the person who recovers may go on to develop life long complications. Salmonella can set up in the gall bladder where it can avoid antibiotics until the gall bladder has to be removed. Children who suffer from complications of E. coli O157:H7 can go on to develop kidney failure years later. They are more likely to have gastrointestinal problems, high blood pressure, diabetes and other systemic health problems.

Once contaminated, if less unrefrigerated, the organisms can grow to large numbers on the fruit, though in the case of most pathogens today, it takes very few organisms to actually make a person sick. Second, fruit is often floated in vats of water on its way to being put into boxes. However, the level of chlorine in that water must be supervised very carefully to ensure that organisms on a single bad piece of fruit do not spread into the water and onto every other piece of fruit.4 In addition, it turns out that we are learning that if there is a temperature differential, as when the apple is warmer than the water, that the piece of fruit will actually absorb water into its interior. We have evidence today that at least apples and tomatoes can become internally contaminated in this manner.5

Someone might try to convince you that with enough chlorine and scrubbing, they can get rid of ALL of the organisms, but data to date shows that this is not the case. There may be a significant reduction of organisms but not necessarily an outright elimination of them.6 If fruit or vegetables are then transported in trucks without refrigeration, which is perfectly legal, the organisms can grow back to higher levels. However, the number of organisms required to create deadly illness is not necessarily very high. In the case of E. coli O157:H7 the number of bacteria considered sufficient to produce illness is less than 10.

In short, once a piece of contaminated fruit gets into the system, its very hard to get it clean. As an example, a company named Sun Orchard from Tempe, Arizona has been using a steam tunnel to heat or pasteurize the outside of the orange; they believe themselves to be ahead of other businesses with respect to making safer, unpasteurized juices. 7 The expectation had been that if the outside was sterilized, the inside of the orange would be safe for making juice.

In general, if a company uses a "poke a hole in the orange" extraction method vs. a "cut the orange in half and squeeze it" extraction method, the former is considered less likely to spread contamination than the latter because so much less of the potentially contaminated surface is affected.8

Unfortunately, with most unpasteurized juices there is a second route for contamination and that is manual contact with the fruit or juice. Between two and three of orange juice outbreaks in the last 10 years have been attributed to issues with worker sanitation. In one, a worker with typhoid fever passed it along to 69 other people in New York. In another, an unknown virus sickened 22 people at a resort in Colorado (see Appendix A).

Note that the number of pieces of fruit or vegetables going into a batch is also an important issue in producing fruit juices or smoothies. The more going in, the more likely that a single contaminated piece will contaminate the entire batch. Likewise, if a single piece of contaminated fruit goes through a machine which is not sterilized for 8 hours, it will contaminate subsequent juice batches made by the same machine. Thus, all other things being equal in manufacture and sterilization, the risk of the juice goes up with the amount of fruit.

Note that the quality of fruit that a juice maker uses today is NOT the same quality of fruit you buy at a grocery store to make juice for yourself. In the U.S. today, juice grade fruit is fruit that is considered a grade below the fruit you see at a grocery store. This fruit is allowed to have external blemishes or bruises, size variations or dimples that otherwise render it unfit for sale as commercial grade fruit sold by the piece at a grocery store9 ...in some cases, these are the kinds of damage that would tell the consumer that it had fallen onto the ground and could have come into contact with animal feces. When your business has expanded so quickly that you are already taking all the decent juice grade fruit, you have to find more. Where can you get more? You can choose to buy the more expensive commercial grade fruit, or you can buy even lower quality fruit, fruit that is more likely to have been on the ground.

Once the fruit or juice is contaminated, the most cost effective technology available today to eliminate organisms is heat treatment known as pasteurization. Refrigerating or even freezing the juice will not eliminate pathogens from the juice, nor will adding a preservative. Drinking the juice right away does not make it any safer.

What Can Saratoga Do?

Last Wednesday, June 23, I went to the Saratoga Planning Commission and asked that they require that Jamba Juice, which has asked for a use permit in the City of Saratoga, be required to post the FDA's warning label language at the shop they plan to put in to the Argonaut shopping center. At the Jamba Juice at El Paseo de Saratoga, I have observed that Jamba Juice posts extensive information about the nutritional and health value of their juices. I believe that their marketing is specifically misleading because they do not describe the risks. To date they are not required to post the FDA warning language because of an FDA loophole a truck could drive through. I would therefore like to see a black and white sign of the same font size posted prominently at the front of the store, just as we have signs posted in bars warning about the effects of alcohol on pregnant women.

The City of Saratoga has recently taken a significant, positive step toward improving the safety of our local creek by imposing slightly more strict regulations than those are currently delineated under state and county codes. By comparison, requiring that juice bars within Saratoga's borders post a simple sign is a very inexpensive step to help ensure that Saratogans are informed about the risks and can protect their health. In the Odwalla outbreak, at last two Saratoga children were hospitalized and other Saratoga cases in all likelihood went unidentified.

Example of a Smoothie Related Outbreak

Ironically, when I spoke before the Planning Commission, I had no idea that a Salmonella outbreak related to unpasteurized juice smoothies was in the process of unfolding. In the last week, the state of Washington has announced that they are uncovering an outbreak of Salmonella muenchen that has affected at least 14 people in the state of Washington and 4 in Oregon. The ages of the people drinking the juice Washington ranged from 2 to 85. The source of the contamination was unpasteurized orange juice, manufactured by Sun Orchard of Tempe, Arizona, the same company that is steaming the outside of their oranges. The President of Sun Orchard is also the Chairman of the Fresh Juice Council, an affiliation of unpasteurized juice companies. At the FDA citrus juice meetings in Irvine, Marc Isaacs spoke glowingly of the many steps his company has taken to ensure the safety of his company's unpasteurized juice under pending FDA regulations. The juice was distributed to California and Arizona as well and is being recalled. It has use-by dates of between June 23 and July 8.

In this case, the juice was distributed to restaurants, including a retirement home. At WorldWraps in Seattle, the juice was made into smoothies. People who didn't even order smoothies made with orange juice were sickened because the blender pitchers were not sterilized between each batch.10

Assuming proper testing is done, this could turn out to be a very large juice outbreak. Unfortunately, in many food outbreaks, proper testing isn't done. Sick people don't often see doctors. Doctors prescribe antibiotics that kill off the organism without ever getting a proper culture. If a culture is done, doctors or the labs may fail to report it to the state. In California, in particular, my family learned just how little California understood the outbreak of which we were a part when the state of Washington identified the outbreak and California had no idea it was happening.

Jamba Juice Specific Risk Factors

Jamba Juice is a large business. I am struck by the similarities between Odwalla in 1996 and Jamba Juice today. Like an echo of "Drink it and thrive," Jamba Juice is presently touting its beverages as alternatives to fast food, e.g. "a healthy, portable meal, " proclaiming that they "make healthy eating, easy, great tasting and fun."

In 1996, Odwalla was growing rapidly and expanding into new markets. They had just begun distributing in two new states. Odwalla's revenues were in the $50 to $60 million range. Jamba Juice now has over 100 stores in California, Colorado, Arizona. It has just opened stores in Washington. In a February, 1997 New York Times article, Jamba Juice officials stated that their storefronts grossed between $300,000 and $1,000,000 per storefront. If we assume that each of their 100+ storefronts grosses only $500,000, Jamba Juice is over $50 million in revenues today. As mentioned previously, as a company grows larger, its demand for fruit puts pressure on it to expand its sources, sources which it might not have considered previously. Odwalla claimed that it had contracts prohibiting the purchase of "drop apples." Yet, when the time came that a batch of bad apples showed up, they were picked through, and the company went on producing.

In 1996, Odwalla was actually in Starbucks, rather than colocating next to Starbucks as Jamba Juice is now doing in many locations. Odwalla's presence inside a coffee shop played a significant role in the outbreak in the Seattle area, where parents buying coffee at Starbucks for themselves bought their children Odwalla apple juice.

Jamba Juice juices unpasteurized orange, carrot and wheat grass juices in its storefronts. At the store at El Paseo de Saratoga, I observed that all the fruit was being handled with bare hands by the store workers. State and county law must not require that workers use gloves, and the Jamba Juice representative at the Planning Commission meeting indicated that workers were washing their hands with antibacterial soaps.

At the El Paseo de Saratoga store, carrots appeared to have been washed and brushed. Yet, I observed a carrot that was split. A carrot with such a fissure could easily have organisms on the inside that have not been reached by a brush. As mentioned, carrots, because they are soil borne, are more likely to come into contact with soil borne organisms such as C. botulinum and Listeria monocytogenes. Listeria is known to cause stillbirth in pregnant women, as well as complicating newborn infants with meningitis leading to potential brain damage. Though no Listeria outbreaks have been traced to unpasteurized juices, an article in the San Jose Mercury News indicated that "Dr. Douglas L. Archer, an Odwalla consultant and former deputy director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said that some listeria is likely to be found in any juice if enough of it is tested."11 Listeria is an organism that grows even under refrigerated conditions.

Wheat grass is an interesting form of food. At a juice meeting in 1997, one California state health official told me that they had found wheat grass growing in raw manure in the front of a juice bar. Presuming that it might only be "fertilized" with raw manure, as opposed to grown in it, wheat grass could be contaminated with any of the soil borne organisms with which carrots could come into contact PLUS fecal organisms such as E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella. While Jamba Juice might tell you that they only cut off the "tops" of the grass, so the part exposed to soil isn't exposed, recent studies of radish sprouts show that the sprout can uptake pathogens through its root system, ultimately leading to an internally contaminated "top."12 Even if wheat grass is grown in sterilized soil, there is a possibility that the wheat "seed" itself could harbor pathogens. Most of the data associated with alfalfa sprout outbreaks has indicated that the seed itself has been the source of the organism.13 Somehow, in harvest perhaps, the alfalfa seed becomes contaminated. That contamination then spreads from one seed to thousands of sprouts when they are grown under warmth, light, moist conditions. The same kinds of conditions needed to grow wheat grass.

Jamba Juice appears to be using the "slice-it-in-half" kind of mechanized orange juicer. While this is a step above juicing by hand, such a slicing mechanism can drive organisms from the outside peel onto the inside where the juice is. Infrequent sterilization of the machine can spread contamination from one batch to the next. At the very least, Jamba Juice should be sterilizing every blender pitcher between batches. It was unclear to me that they were doing so. A valuable practice Jamba Juice should be employing would be to take random samples of juice from its 100+ stores to test them for bacterial contamination including Salmonella, generic E. coli and Listeria. These results could then be made available to you.

In Conclusion

I apologize for the length of this document, but it was clear from my three minute presentation in front of the Planning Commission that some members did not seem to recognize that unpasteurized juices represent a health threat to the children, seniors, pregnant women and immune impaired of Saratoga, nor did some members seem to be convinced that there was anything they could do. When I first began to work with FDA, a number of people close to me said, "Why are you doing this? Nothing will change." I know this to be untrue. Good rules can be made by those with the willpower to make change happen, as the City Council has managed to do with septic/sewer ordinance.

There are a lot of reasons why Saratoga residents do not want to accept large corporation businesses without asking them to make some modifications; potentially saving lives is one of the best of those reasons. Please send a message to Jamba Juice to let them know that in Saratoga you cannot simply market a product as healthy when sold by the cup which if sold in a bottle would require a warning label.

For additional questions you might have, the following is a list of county, state and federal health officials which you or the city staff might want to contact on this issue:

Dr. Sara Cody, Communicable Disease Control Officer/Assistant Health Officer,

Santa Clara County

408-885-4214

 

Dr. Jeff Farrar, Food and Drug Scientist,

Food and Drug Branch

State of California Dept of Health Services,

916-327-7002

 

Dr. Morris Potter, Director of the Food Safety Initiative

Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition

Food and Drug Administration

202-205-4057

They may be able to point you in the direction of people that can answer further questions.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my concerns.

Sincerely yours,

Laurie Girand