Follow the lettuce

Vince Beiser in the LA Weekly pursues the romaine trail from seed to Cheesecake Factory in Calabasas and finds sleek corporate towers, Third World–style shantytowns, toxic chemicals, bioengineering, cutthroat competition...

Nearly half of the world’s romaine salads originate in a small, bare building crammed with sleek high-tech equipment on the outskirts of Gilroy, the California farming town best known for its garlic. This is the biotech research laboratory of Central Valley Seeds Inc. (CVS). Founder Tony Avila estimates that 45 percent of all romaine grown on the planet sprouts from CVS seeds...

Nearly $2 billion worth of lettuce is sold in this country every year, and the industry is fiercely competitive. A hot new variety has to be protected from unscrupulous competitors. CVS keeps a database of the DNA “fingerprints” of all of its patented varieties, and frequently checks the DNA of competitors’ lettuce to see if they’ve illegally used CVS’s seeds or even crossed them with another variety. “I’ve caught people from other seed companies literally digging plants out of our fields,” says Avila. “All you need is one head. That’ll give you 35,000 seeds. From that you can sow a whole field.”

Excellent Caesar today at the Pacific Dining Car, by the way.