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.
Not half as uncomfortable as e-coli will make you.
Contrary to common birkenstock belief, most of the stuff in Manure is not beneficial for gardening. The part that is, well you can get that in a bag and be assured of getting just the best part. Chemistry is your friend. Mankind stopped crapping in the fields a long time ago.
Pretty good stuff.
excellent comment
Being a vegetarian and organic food consumer for about 20 years....I have yet to contract E. Coli. People need to be careful and research no matter what they consume... whether it is food, pharmaceutical medicines or supplements...
Or when traveling to California, it seems.....
The victim's son identified her Friday night as Marion Graff, 77, of Manitowoc, who died of kidney failure on Sept. 7.
"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.
This is BS. CA has the highest food quality standards in the nation.
Vegetables are washed numerous times during processing to prevent this kind of thing from happening.
This sounds similar to the incident in Arizona, where the "victim" spilled coffee on herself and sued the company who provided the coffee.
Be careful, organic food is not automatically safer --the use of untreated cow manure in the industry is good source of E. coli which can cause this type of problem.
Maybe that's how it's done in Australia.
But that's not how it's done in California.
Why is it that we are not worried about this in our home. Hmmmm, could it be we never believed produce is the U.S. was clean enough to eat right off the shelf?
I really have to ask - do you garden, farm or ranch, like we do? Because manure is considered to be one of the BEST things for gardens, as long as it's not fresh and raw. I'm not trying to be combative, it's just that I'd love to know who told you that manure was "not good" for gardening. It sounds like something the liberals would say, because they believe anything that comes from those bad old methane-producing cows and their land-raping farmers is BAD. It's the kind of thing that obnoxious yuppies say (right after they move in next to their farming neighbors who have been there for a hundred years) right before they sue for damages from the "toxic waste" from the sheep flock in the neighbor's field...
It's not a "birkenstock" thing - it's a millions of years of farming and ranching thing. Have you all gotten so far away from farming that you no longer know how it was done just thirty years ago?
Wow, let me explain... it's not about "mankind crapping in the fields", it's about animals making fertilizer, and it has a LOT more in it than just nitrogen. Ammonia, salts, urea, and a host of other compounds are there, they're useful, and it's FREE. If manure is not used as fertilizer, it has to be hauled off. If used properly, as it has been for thousands of years, E Coli shouldn't be a problem in composted manure. The key is COMPOSTING - and once again, that's not some "hippie" thing, it' just what people in the country do with their leftover vegetable matter and animal manure.
The problems arise when RAW manure is used on vegetables, and that raw manure is considered to be inferior to composted manure by most gardeners. Not only is raw manure yucky to use, it's can also "burn" your garden if improperly applied.
And it's about more than animal fertilizers - it's about clovers and vetches and other cover crops. What I can do for my piece of land is WAY more than I could ever just pour out of a bag...
Yes, chemistry is our friend, and so is knowledge. Read "The American Farm Book" (1847) and learn more about both.
Not a very good spokeswoman either. This isn't all about you. How about a little compassion for your victims? I'm sure their attornies would like to discuss it with you.
Wow, that's just creepy (tinfoil hat ON)
stlnative: nice link, I think I'm actually going to have to get a thermometer so I can see if I get up to temperature or not in the pre-treating "tubs". I suppose that's the only way to know...
ALL: Perhaps you have some advice. The reason this thread interests me: I've been collecting the compost to try and enrich the garden area of our newly-bought pasture, which has become extremely poor.
We just moved in on 36 acres of sandy loam, ten acres of which has been used as a coastal bermuda hay pasture for the last ten years (no animals on it, inorganic fertilizer, yearly cuttings). EVEN THOUGH it's been artificially fertilized, the nitrogen is WAY low, phosphates extremely high, and the potash almost non-existant. Other ranchers felt this is because it's had no "organic matter" like manure and humus added to it for over ten years.
I'm thinking a cover crop is the answer. I've actually got an incredible amount of spring vetch on it (if it ever rains), and I would think that would fix the nitrogen, but I'm wondering if I'm going to have to cut it and let it lie. Any thoughts?
Mad cow disease for smug vegetarians. Let's see countries ban importing spinach.
When you combine this with your previous post (that the E Coli could actually be GROWN into the leaves of the plant) it becomes downright scary. I have an elderly mother and my young son living with me and my husband, and we have fresh salad greens every night. Because our rain has been so poor this year, I couldn't grow a salad garden and just bought leafy greens, including the bagged ones.
This makes me want to go in and chunk it all into the chicken's scrap pail. (I wonder - can chickens get E Coli infections?)
Either way, what you've posted about the growth into the plant means it's impossible to eat fresh lettuce without risking a possible E Coli infection, unless one knowa what was used for fertilizer; but I don't think they list that on the packages...
We had the biggest cucumbers and tomatos and green beans and watermelons you ever saw.
I'm Popeye the sailor man with e-coli in the can....
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