Posted on 09/15/2006 11:22:16 PM PDT by Aussiebabe
Tainted spinach traced to California By ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 43 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - A California natural foods company was linked Friday to a nationwide E. coli outbreak that has killed one person and sickened nearly 100 others. Supermarkets across the country pulled spinach from shelves, and consumers tossed out the leafy green.
Food and Drug Administration officials said that they had received reports of illness in 19 states. Twenty-nine people have been hospitalized, 14 of them with kidney failure.
The outbreak was traced to Natural Selection Foods, a holding company based in San Juan Bautista, Calif., known for Earthbound Farm and other brands. The company has voluntarily recalled products containing spinach.
FDA officials stressed that the bacteria had not been isolated in products sold by Natural Selection Foods but that the link was established by patient accounts of what they had eaten before becoming ill.
An investigation was continuing.
"It is possible that the recall and the information will extend beyond Natural Selection Foods and involve other brands and other companies, at other dates," said Dr. David Acheson, the chief medical officer with the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
Natural Selection Foods LLC said in a statement that it was cooperating with federal and state health officials to identify the source of the contamination and had stopped shipping all fresh spinach products. They are sold under many brand names, including Earthbound Farm, Dole, Green Harvest, Natural Selection Foods, Rave Spinach, Ready Pac and Trader Joe's.
State health officials received the first reports of illness on Aug. 25, and the FDA was informed on Wednesday, Acheson said.
The FDA warned people nationwide not to eat the spinach. Washing won't get rid of the tenacious bug, though thorough cooking can kill it.
"We're waiting for the all-clear. In the meantime, Popeye the Sailor Man and this family will not be eating bagged spinach," said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University. The Tennessee university's medical center was treating a 17-year-old Kentucky girl for E. coli infection. That case originally was listed as being from Tennessee, but federal health officials changed it to Kentucky.
Each year, consumers buy hundreds of millions of pounds of bagged spinach — triple-washed and packaged in cellophane bags and clamshell boxes.
"We are very, very upset about this," Natural Selection Foods spokeswoman Samantha Cabaluna said Friday night. "What we do is produce food that we want to be healthy and safe for consumers, so this is a tragedy for us."
The company said consumers could call 800-690-3200 for a refund or replacement coupons for tossed-out spinach products.
Wisconsin accounted for 29 illnesses, about one-third of the cases, including the lone death. The victim's son identified her Friday night as Marion Graff, 77, of Manitowoc, who died of kidney failure on Sept. 7.
Other states reporting cases were: California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We are telling everyone to get rid of fresh bagged spinach right now. Don't assume anything is over," Gov. Jim Doyle said.
FDA officials said they issued the nationwide consumer alert without waiting to identify the source of the tainted spinach.
"Early is good," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, adding that the alert may have prevented hundreds more cases.
An industry spokeswoman said public health concerns justified the blanket warning: "It needed to happen this way," said Kathy Means, a spokeswoman for the Produce Marketing Association. "Public health has to trump economics at this time."
More than half the nation's 500 million-pound spinach crop is grown in California's Monterey County, according to the Agriculture Department.
"We're trying to get to the bottom of this and figure out what happened. Everybody is terribly concerned," said Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation.
Even before the latest outbreak, a joint state and federal effort has been under way in the California county to find and eliminate any possible sources of E. coli contamination.
"We need to strive to do even better so even one life is not lost," said Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, FDA's acting commissioner.
The FDA's top food expert stressed the importance of stopping the bacterium at its source, since rinsing spinach won't eliminate the risk. "If you wash it, it is not going to get rid of it," said Robert Brackett, director of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Nutrition.
E. coli lives in the intestines of cattle and other animals and typically is spread through contamination by fecal material. Brackett said the use of manure as a fertilizer for produce typically consumed raw, such as spinach, is not in keeping with good agricultural practices. "It is something we don't want to see," he told a food policy conference.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Safeway Inc., SuperValu Inc. and other major grocery chains stopped selling spinach, removing it from shelves and salad bars.
"We pulled everything that we have spinach in," said Dan Brettelle, manager of a Piggly Wiggly store in Columbia, S.C.
Consumer activist Barb Kowalcyk said fixing the nation's "fractured network" of food safety agencies could save lives. In 2001, her 2-year-old son, Kevin, died of E. coli, possibly after eating tainted ground beef.
"How can we improve communication between agencies? That needs to happen," the Loveland, Ohio, resident said.
Not all strains of E. coli cause illness: E. coli O157:H7, the strain involved in the current outbreak, was first recognized as a cause of illness in 1982. That strain causes an estimated 73,000 cases of infection, including 61 deaths, each year in the United States, according to the CDC.
When ingested, the bug can cause diarrhea, often with bloody stools. Most healthy adults can recover completely within a week, although some people — including the very young and old — can develop a form of kidney failure that often leads to death.
Sources of the bacterium include uncooked produce, raw milk, unpasteurized juice, contaminated water and meat, especially undercooked or raw hamburger.
It's probably best if restaurants just take spinach salad off their menus until they start hearing from customers.
Nor in some parts of California it would seem....
Well if these organic growers are anyting like the lefty lady I met in her store in a hippy town she told me she had no running water and she defecated in her composte pile. Everything was very earth friendly and organic.
There has been an ongoing investigation to identify the source of some contaminated lettuce for 2 years and the Fox reporter said that he had talked to some farmer and they said they were very concerned because the food supply was a matter of national security. That makes me pause just a moment and wonder.
I have read threads on FR that kicked around how terrorists could mess with our food supply and most of them were ludicrous but this is worth some serious thought. E-coli isn't something you can see, grow it in a lab, carry it in a plastic bag in your pocket and keep your hands saturated with it as you pick. Or even go to the field and spray it on soon before harvesting. I just think it is worth a thought anyway.
I've had some time to think about what I posted and I think that that is a very unlikely scenario but it is still worth thinking about.
There are plenty of studies rgarding the use of pesticides and miscarriages (Epidemiology, March 2001). The study clearly states pesticides are a contributing factor in miscarriages.
Studies on the effect of pesticides on children can be found in Environmental Health Perspectives, March 2003. Children who ate 75% organic foods had 1/6th the level of pesticides in their urine as those who did not eat 75% organic.
Since pesticides are obviously neurotoxins there could be many long term ramifications. There is a great book called, "Excitotoxcins: That Taste That Kills" by Dr. Russell Blaylock if you would like to educate yourself further.
On a purely antecdotal level....only about 10 out of 10 children who come into our office (the Doc I work with has a PhD in Pharmacology and Nutrition) with ADD, ADHD and other attention disorders have high levels of pesticide and heavy metal toxicity. Usually, the kids have extremely elevated levels of mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic.....all of which are found in different types of pesticides according to the EPA. There is also quite a lot of mining in Nevada so there is another environmental contributor as well.
Its up to you to make the choice on how you want to live your life. I choose to be proactive and research everything I can about the world around me...and the world within me.
Its up to you to make the choice on how you want to live your life. I choose to be proactive and research everything I can about the world around me...and the world within me
** EXACTLY! This is what leading a holistic lifestyle boils down to. What an insightful post. You made my evening BL!
Probably Earthbound Farm (Natural Selection Foods is the legal entities name for the corporation, and they sell to lot of companies.
Company: organic spinach not to blame
By JUSTIN M. NORTON, Associated Press WriterMon Sep 18, 3:32 AM ET
The company whose fresh spinach was linked to an E. coli outbreak that's sickened at least 109 people said its organic products had been cleared of contamination, while health officials continued working to pinpoint the bacteria source.
Natural Selection Foods LLC, the country's largest grower of organic produce, said late Sunday that manufacturing codes from packages of spinach that infected patients turned over to health officials all were from non-organic spinach. Natural Selection packages both organic and conventionally grown spinach in separate areas at its San Juan Bautista plant.
The company, however, did not immediately lift any recalls of 34 brands. Those brands include the company's own labels and those of other companies that had contracts with Natural Selection to produce or package its spinach.
Meanwhile, Salinas-based River Ranch Fresh Foods added to its recall spring mixes containing spinach sold under the labels Hy-Vee, Fresh N' Easy and Farmers Market, FDA officials said. All contain spinach purchased from Natural Selection, they said.
The Food and Drug Administration and California Department of Health Services planned Monday to work toward tracing the infected greens to individual farms. The inquiry will review irrigation methods, harvest conditions and other practices at farms possibly involved.
The spinach could have been contaminated in the field or during processing. About 74 percent of the fresh-market spinach grown in the U.S. comes from California, according to the California Farm Bureau Federation.
There is no indication that the outbreak was deliberate, said Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer with the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
The FDA continued to warn consumers not to eat fresh spinach or products containing fresh spinach until further notice.
"This is unquestionably a significant outbreak in terms of E. coli," Acheson said.
E. coli cases linked to tainted spinach have been reported in 19 states, with Wisconsin reporting the most cases, including the death of a 77-year-old woman.
Other states reporting cases were California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, according to the CDC.
Seven new cases reported Sunday were in states with previous illnesses, Acheson said.
In Ohio, state health officials said they were investigating the death of a 23-month-old girl who was sickened by E. coli to determine whether the case was related to the outbreak. The girl's mother said she often buys bagged spinach.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday they've started an Atlanta-based emergency operations center to help state health agencies with E. coli testing. Epidemiologists are helping test spinach samples and stool samples of infected people, center spokeswoman Lola Russell said.
The center is helping when state health agencies can't perform the tests or when a second opinion is needed, Russell said.
Natural Selection recalled its packaged spinach throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico as a precaution after federal health officials said some of those hospitalized reported eating brands of prepackaged spinach distributed by the company.
However, some restaurants and retailers may be taking spinach out of bags before selling it, so consumers shouldn't buy it at all, the FDA said.
Boiling contaminated spinach can kill the bacteria, but washing won't eliminate it, the CDC warned.
Federal officials stressed that the bacteria had not been isolated in products sold by Natural Selection. As the investigation continues, other brands may be implicated, officials said.
Natural Selection was founded in 1984 by Drew and Myra Goodman. Within two years, its best-known brand, Earthbound Farm, began shipping pre-washed, packaged salad fixings, and the company's "spring mix" became a mainstay of restaurants and supermarkets.
Maybe use some pH test papers and see if someone has an idea of how acidic or alkaline the stuff has to be to kill the bacteria.
right, pesticides that preserve and make food fresh and safe, "kills".
Spinach is a liberal food?
What are the other ones? I need to know so I can quit eating liberal food stat.
...or Michael Schiavo...
Just "organic" spinach dude! as in organically contaminated.
also, Ben & Jerrys
Organic hippies sickening all of us.
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