E. coli O157:H7, Spinach and Salads Bags

[Snowy Owl]

E. coli found in a spinach package; probe focuses on 9 Calif. farms
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060920/NEWS32/60920033

ASSOCIATED PRESS
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WASHINGTON ? Spinach found in the refrigerator of a person sickened by E. coli was contaminated with the bacteria, the ?smoking gun? that investigators have sought for the origin of the deadly outbreak, health officials say.

Federal and state investigators today focused their hunt on nine farms in California?s greater Salinas Valley, said Dr. Mark Horton, the state public health officer. They also were checking processing plants, said Horton, who called the bag of tainted Dole baby spinach the ?smoking gun? in the case.

Despite closing in on the source of the bacteria as likely somewhere in Monterey, San Benito or Santa Clara counties, officials continued to recommend that consumers not eat fresh spinach.

?Yesterday we had it down to California. Today we?ve got it down to three counties,? said Dr. David Acheson of the Food and Drug Administration?s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. ?We want it down to a salad bowl and eventually a spinach leaf.?

The tainted bag came from a refrigerator in New Mexico, said Department of Health officials for that state. A person who ate some of the leafy greens became one of 146 people in 23 states sickened by the outbreak. One person has died.

The spinach tested positive for the same strain of E. coli linked to the outbreak, Acheson said. Dole is one of the brands of spinach recalled Friday by Natural Selection Foods LLC, of San Juan Bautista, Calif.

The tainted greens ? conventionally grown spinach and not organic ? came from one of the farms that supplies spinach to Natural Selection, said Samantha Cabaluna, spokeswoman for Natural Selection.

Other bags of fresh spinach recovered elsewhere in the country also were being tested in the investigation.

?It?s certainly premature to say only this bag is going to test positive,? Acheson said. ?There are others in the works.?

Government and industry officials were working on how to allow spinach grown elsewhere back on the market, Acheson said.

Democratic Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg, both of New Jersey, pushed the FDA to assure the public that spinach grown in their state is safe.

?As the nation?s fourth-largest spinach producer, spinach farming is a multimillion-dollar industry for the Garden State,? Menendez said. ?That is why we are imploring the FDA to move quickly in identifying the source of the infected spinach.?

Investigators began visiting farms in the Salinas Valley on Tuesday, seeking signs of past flooding or cases in which contaminated surface areas had come into contact with crops. They also were looking for potential sources of bacteria inside packing plants.

California produces 74 percent of the nation?s fresh spinach crop. The Salinas Valley accounts for roughly three-quarters of the state?s share, and it has been the focus of the investigation. The area has links to both Natural Selection Foods and a second company that?s also recalled fresh spinach products, River Ranch Fresh Foods of Salinas.

Arizona and Colorado today joined the list of states reporting E. coli cases. The others are California, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Wisconsin has reported the most cases, as well as the lone death.

Among those sickened, 71 percent were women. Among those victims who could provide a date, they reported falling sick between Aug. 19 and Sept. 5, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New Mexico?s public health laboratory isolated E. coli from the bag of opened spinach and then completed ?DNA fingerprinting? tests late Tuesday. State and federal officials then matched it to the strain of the bacteria ? E. coli O157:H7 ? implicated in the outbreak.

Read more in later editions of The Blade and toledoblade.com
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[Snowy Owl]

Re: E. coli O157:H7, Spinach and Salads Bags

Five more illnesses blamed on E. coli-tainted spinach
http://www.mohavedailynews.com/articles/2006/09/24/news/local/local5.txt

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The outbreak of E. coli linked to fresh spinach was blamed for another five cases of illness Saturday, raising the number of people sickened to 171, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The number of states affected held steady at 25. So far, 92 people have been hospitalized, including a Wisconsin woman who died. Two other deaths have been reported in suspected cases - a child in Idaho and an elderly woman in Maryland - but those cases are still being investigated.

For more than a week, the Food and Drug Administration has recommended people not eat fresh, raw spinach. State and federal investigators since have traced the contaminated spinach back to three counties in California's Salinas Valley, and already farm inspections there are turning up possible problems.
<table class="photo-bdr" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <!-- AdSys ad not found for news/local:middle -->
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> On Friday, officials said spinach grown anywhere outside that area is safe to eat - but the industry needs to figure out how to let consumers know the origin of what they're buying before the green can return to sale, said Dr. David Acheson of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Last week, Natural Selection Foods LLC of San Juan Bautista, Calif., recalled all its spinach and spinach-containing products. Many people reported eating the company's spinach, sold under multiple brands, before falling sick. And a package of Dole baby spinach, one of those brands, taken from a victim's refrigerator tested positive for E. coli.

On Saturday, Pacific Coast Fruit Co. of Portland, Ore., announced a recall of its salad products that may have included Natural Selection spinach. Others companies recalling potentially tainted salad products are S.T. Produce, based in Seattle, River Ranch Fresh Foods of Salinas, Calif., and RLB Food Distributors of West Caldwell, N.J.

Pacific Coast said its products were distributed in Alaska, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. S.T. Produce said Friday its salads were distributed to stores and delis in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.
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[AlaskaDenise]

Re: E. coli O157:H7, Spinach and Salads Bags

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-spinach13oct13,1,3885375.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california

E. Coli Link Is Found in Cattle Feces

A genetic match to the strain responsible for three recent deaths is discovered near one of the farms suspected of growing tainted spinach.
By Rong-Gong Lin II and Marla Cone, Times Staff Writers
October 13, 2006


State and federal officials probing the recent E. coli outbreak linked to spinach said Thursday that they have found the genetic match of the bacterium in cattle feces near a farm suspected of supplying the tainted greens.

The discovery represented a major breakthrough for investigators, who in years of tracking outbreaks have never before found a matching E. coli sample in the environment near where the tainted spinach or lettuce was grown.

The finding did not answer how the spinach was contaminated with the virulent strain of E. coli that has killed three and sickened nearly 200 people nationwide.

Still, "finding a close or identical strain is sufficiently rare that it speaks volumes about the likely source," said UC Davis plant pathologist Trevor Suslow, who has studied pathogens in spinach and lettuce in the Salinas Valley.

The breakthrough underscored a key concern of health officials: the proximity of cattle, whose feces can carry the dangerous bacterium, to farms growing ready-to-eat greens.

"We do not have a smoking 'cow' at this point," said Kevin Reilly, deputy director for prevention services at the California Department of Health Services.

But, he said, at the farm neighboring the cattle pasture where the strain was isolated, "the fields are surrounded, frankly, by pastures where livestock are kept."

The spinach farm's operator leases its land from the cattle ranch owner, and the two operations are separated by a paved road and fences.

The fecal samples that matched the E. coli strain in the outbreak were found in a pasture about half a mile to a mile from the spinach field.

The closeness of cattle and leafy green operations in the Salinas Valley area is "not uncommon," Reilly said.

Not all of the four farms suspected in the outbreak have both spinach and livestock operations, Reilly said. Local agricultural officials say most cattle ranching is done in the foothills, while leafy greens are largely grown in the fertile valley bottom.

"The proximity ? has always been an issue of concern," said Robert Brackett, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's food safety center.

Officials and food safety experts said Thursday's announcement raises a question: Should minimum distances be set between cattle pastures and fields where leafy greens are grown?

"If you have cattle in a pasture that's adjoining where you're growing lettuce or spinach crops, you have a problem," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, based in Washington, D.C.

"You have to create zones around the field to make sure the cattle manure can't get into the farm field," she said. "To narrow the solution to one field or one group of cattle would be missing the more systemic problem that may exist in the Salinas Valley."

Even before the announcement, some farmers and cattlemen had informally expressed concerns about the possibility of having to create buffer zones between fields and pastureland.

"You're talking about huge amounts of private property," said Bob Perkins, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau.

Matt Byrne, the California Cattlemen's Assn.'s executive vice president, said cattle ranchers have been putting practices in place over the last decade to prevent runoff and water contamination. Those efforts include researching the slope of land, fencing off creek sides and planting buffer zones, he said.

The state Department of Food and Agriculture has no regulations regarding the distance between cattle and fresh produce operations, said spokesman Steve Lyle.

Having a field of spinach neighboring a cattle range does violate "good agricultural practices," a voluntary set of national guidelines on food safety practices, said Alejandro Castillo, an associate professor of food microbiology at Texas A&M University.

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