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.
Wasn't us.
We eat a lot of Earthbound Farms spinach in the winter. In the summer, I either grow my own or buy spinach grown locally...so, lucky me, I missed out on this.
This is not possible because Organic is better. We've been told by "them."
Very bad news for any who love fresh raw greens - and for those trying to raise their own produce as well. I have a horse, a cow and chickens. I compost their waste for at least thirty days in a black plastic can in direct sun to "cook" it and raise the temp to levels that SHOULD render it harmless, then I put it in a regular compost pile for months before using it.
But this kind of tragic news makes me uncomfortable. I'm trying to use good sanitary practice, and I wonder if there's a way to KNOW when the manure is completely composted...
Sadly, this might end up with the government telling "backyard gardeners" that they can't use manure for fertilizer - and that makes me even more uncomfortable.
then the backyard gardeners need to tell the government that it's use of "manure" will be restricted as well.
broccoli rules
Organic food is never safer! This should be more typical
of rotting organic produce.
Orion Samuelson says so and I'll believe him over
any anti-synthetic herbicide quack.
You got your proof!
that will never happen - people just need to educate themselves about using manure in their own backyard gardens.
Looking this up on internet is easy...
Composting livestock manure
http://gardening.wsu.edu/stewardship/compost/manure/manure0.htm
Now you know food fertilized with poop is better than food that has been grown with that nasty old liquid miracle gro stuff..
cross reference...
E. Coli Outbreak Update - Partial List of Spinach Brand Names Recalled
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1702460/posts
http://www.ift.org/cms/?pid=1000572
So, is there any way this can be blamed on Illegal aliens.
Single issue conservatives want to know.
Everyone knows Popeye eats canned spinach.
Doctors should also learn to avoid lame humor.
Yeah, I thought the joke was lame, and maybe a little inappropriate, given that at least one person has died from this mess.
There is alot of this happening on the spinach E.Coli threads, some are even suggesting that people wash the spinach in a bleach/water mixture to kill the e.coli and that it should be safe to eat raw after this is done.
The problem is the FDA is starting to think that the E.Coli has actually enter into the inside of the plant through the roots or that it has entered through the cut end of the stems and traveled up through the leaf veins during the washing process.
Cooking raw spinach at 160F degrees will kill the e.coli
Here is good article about how e.coli could be getting into leafy greens.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12536902/
Here is a small snippet... (this is only one possibility)
Scientists believe E.coli bacteria might have been absorbed by the lettuce plant’s root system. If that happens, washing the lettuce won’t do any good—the E.coli is already growing inside.
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