Washingtonpost.com
By Al Meyerhoff and William B. Schultz

Federal agents are scurrying across the Salinas Valley -- the nation's "salad bowl" -- in search of the source of the E. coli contaminating the spinach supply. They won't find it without a mirror, because the real culprit in this case is the U.S. government. A half-dozen federal agencies administer a patchwork quilt of outdated standards, inadequate inspections and porous statutes that allow pollution in the fields, filth in the packing houses and contaminated food on the supermarket shelves. Millions of Americans are sickened by food each year; some 9,000 die.