Evergreen Fresh Produce sprouting back after scare
August 6, 2011
by Mike Weland
newsbf.com
After having spent 23 years quietly building a Boundary County agri-business growing sprouts, Fred and Nadine Scharf, owners of Evergreen Fresh Produce, Moyie Springs, were afraid it had all come to an end after the FDA issued what turned out to be a false salmonella alarm in late June.

After more than a month of turmoil, however, Nadine said that business is slowly picking back up, and two of the four employees who were laid off as a result of the scare are now back at work, preparing the first shipment of sprouts to go out in more than a month to be shipped on Tuesday.

"I think we're going to pull through," Nadine said. "I'm hopeful. We're getting some of our customers back."

The support of the produce companies that market Evergreen Fresh Produce products, FSA and Spokane Produce, she said, never waivered in their support, and that support made a difference.

"FSA and Spokane Produce stood by us," Nadine said. "If it wasn't for them, we'd have our doors closed."

At the height of their business, Evergreen Fresh Produce had 14 employees. They're now down to five, but looking to add one more. They'd have brought back all four of the employees laid off due to the scare, but one moved to Coeur d'Alene and the other found another job in Bonners Ferry.

The salmonella outbreak in June sickened 19 people in North Idaho, eastern Washington and western Montana, areas where Evergreen Fresh Produce sprouts are sold, but rigorous testing since then hasn't turned up a trace of contamination at the Moyie Springs facilities.

And while the "don't buy" alert was in force, the FDA didn't recall a single package of Evergreen Fresh Produce sprouts from store shelves, which is the usual procedure in such an outbreak. The product continued to be sold, and no additional cases of poisoning were reported.

And while the suspicions have been proven false, the FDA stands by their warning.

"Would you please let the public know the results of the FDA test that no Salmonella was detected and that our sprouts are safe for the public to use?" Nadine wrote the FDA July 26.

"Negative results do not rule out the sprouts as a cause of the outbreak," replied an FDA public affairs officer.

Some grocery outlets and restaraunts have placed new orders for Evergreen Fresh Produce sprouts; Akins Harvest Foods, Super 1 Foods, Yoke's Pac n Save, the Breadbasket. Other major customers; Safeway, Fairchild Air Force Base, haven't.

The media, this one included, were quick to publish the alert when it came out, and the result was devastating to that small North Idaho business. People listened, and stopped buying.

But Nadine said she's been surprised at the media attention she's recieved since the negative findings were revealed.

In her attempt to repair her business's falsely tarnished integrity after finding out the FDA wouldn't help, she contacted a Spokane television station and gave them the FDA's "all clear" report, and that station ran a brief story that Evergreen Fresh Produce products have been proven safe to buy. Since then, she's been contacted by reporters from as far away as Seattle and Boise.

And buyers are slowly starting again to offer their customers, who never stopped eating the product, a fine, tasty and nutritious part of their diet.

"If everyone will listen, we'll get back up and running," Nadine said. "It's been difficult, but I think we'll crawl out of it."