But because of the way we feed our cows and process our veggies, it can be deadly.

An outbreak of E. coli bacteria in packaged spinach has killed at least one and poisoned at least 175 people. Two more victims, including a 2-year-old Idaho boy who died a most horrible death last week at Salt Lake City's Primary Children's Medical Center, probably suffered from the same contamination.

E. coli does not naturally occur in vegetables. It lives in the guts of mammals. The particular strain that can cause violent, bloody diarrhea, kidney failure, hallucinations and death generally comes from the innards of cattle that have been force-gorged on cheap subsidized grain rather than fed the grass their digestive tracts are evolved to handle.

Food sleuths have traced the outbreak to California's Salinas Valley, primary source of the nation's packaged vegetables, where giant farms and industrial-scale processing plants spit out packages that are sold across the continent under more than 30 brand names.

A likely source of the poop that infected the spinach is the growing number of industrial-scale dairy farms that have also been popping up in the same area. Not only are such operations notorious for polluting water supplies with untreated runoff, but the kind of E. coli that kills people has been shown to thrive in the acidic guts of cattle that eat a lot of grain.

What's really scary is that if the E. coli-laced waste gets into the water, and the vegetables draw it up into their leaves, then the bacteria will be imbedded in the plant, where it cannot be washed off.

We have come to accept that this modern industrial system provides us with cheap and plentiful groceries. But if the industrial model is to be embraced, then it should include the state-of-the-art tracking systems common in other industries so that any food found to be tainted can be immediately traced back to the store, truck, processor, field and seed it came from.

If Big Ag won't give us that, or even if it will, then moving to a more decentralized, home-grown system of food production makes more sense. And that's a decision consumers can make on their own.