I don't like buying produce from California. They use Mexican day laborers to work the fields. Since the farm owners are cheap they don't bother giving proper toilet and hand washing facilities to the Mexican workers. As a result the workers use the fields as a toilet and end up contaminating large amounts of crops with human waste.
The most likely thing to give you food poisoning or dangerous diseases like hepatitis are raw vegetables from California. If I buy produce from California I wash it very carefully and cook it.
Exactly ! And we get a lot of food from Mexico, too. No wonder we get diseases from foods nowdays. It should not be something that would normally be found in vegetables. It has to get there some way. Just sick !
I like local produce or grow my own.
If we use soap on the produce, it can actually make it soak into the pores even more so. Bleach and other soaps can leave a reside that we eat, as well. We teach folks to use running water, not to soak the foods, either. Just rinse or dip up and down in water. Same if you scrub too hard, with a brush, it can push the bacteria into the foods.