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Krista

CDC warns to not eat lettuce from Arizona amid E.Coli outbreak

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No one should eat romaine lettuce — or any lettuce at all — unless they can be sure it’s not from Arizona, federal health officials said Friday.

More than 50 people have become sick in an outbreak of E. coli food poisoning linked to romaine lettuce and now several people in Alaska have also gotten ill, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new warning.

“Based on new information from Alaska, CDC is expanding its warning to cover all types of romaine lettuce from the Yuma, Arizona growing region,” the CDC said in its update.

“This warning now includes whole heads and hearts of romaine lettuce, in addition to chopped romaine and salads and salad mixes containing romaine.”

The CDC said it did not have the number of sick people in Alaska yet, and it cannot say for sure where the contaminated lettuce came from precisely.

“No common grower, supplier, distributor, or brand has been identified at this time,” the CDC said.

So people had better be safe than sorry.

“People who have store-bought romaine lettuce at home, including whole heads and hearts of romaine, chopped romaine, and salads and salad mixes containing romaine lettuce, should not eat it and should throw it away, even if some of it was eaten and no one has gotten sick.,” the CDC said.

“If you do not know if the lettuce is romaine, do not eat it and throw it away.”

It’s hard to tell where lettuce comes from. Restaurants may know, but unless the restaurant can assure patrons that their romaine is not from the Yuma, Arizona area, people should not eat it, the CDC said.

“Restaurants and retailers should not serve or sell any romaine lettuce from the Yuma, Arizona growing region. Ask your suppliers about the source of their romaine lettuce,” the CDC said.

E. coli infections that can be traced to lettuce have been reported in 16 states, the CDC said. No one has died but 31 have been hospitalized and five have developed a severe complication of E. coli infection called hemolytic uremic syndrome.

The CDC and state health officials have spoken to the people who got infected.

“Most people reported eating a salad at a restaurant, and romaine lettuce was the only common ingredient identified among the salads eaten,” the CDC said. “The restaurants reported using bagged, chopped romaine lettuce to make salads.”

It can take weeks to track down the source of a food poisoning outbreak. Food is often shipped to central plants from various farms, where it is processed, mixed together, packaged, and redistributed.

Last winter, Consumer Reports criticized the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration for not warning people away from romaine lettuce when there was a similar outbreak, but the CDC said at the time that it couldn’t pinpoint what type of salad green might be responsible.

E. coli infections can cause severe stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting. The bacteria can be spread by contaminated water, animal manure or in undercooked beef.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/don-t-eat-romaine-lettuce-cdc-now-warns-n867941

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 Public health officials identified a Yuma, Ariz., farm they say is linked to eight cases of an E. coli outbreak that has sickened 98 people in 22 states.

Harrison Farms was the source of whole heads of Romaine lettuce sold to a prison in Nome, Alaska, where eight inmates became ill after eating the tainted lettuce.

But officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration cautioned Friday that Harrison Farms so far can't be tied to the other 90 cases, which are still under investigation.

Harrison Farm officials hung up phone multiple times Friday and, within a few minutes of the announcement, stopped answering calls altogether.

However, a lawyer representing Harrison Farms said Friday the eight cases only account for a fraction of the total cases.

"There is a real preoccupation with the source and the biggest takeaway from that is they don't know about all the sources," said Bradley Sullivan, a Sacramento lawyer specializing in agricultural cases. "They are not able to say that Harrison is the source of the other 90 cases. It's unlikely that they are. If they could have made that connection, they would would have said so."

Sullivan said this is an unconventional outbreak. He said there could be multiple outbreaks happening simultaneously, or multiple farms affected by the same sources such as water or animals. 

There could have been an unexpected break in the distribution chain, meaning lettuce could have been contaminated by a processor or a shipper and sent to different buyers, Sullivan said.

"Everybody wants to know where it came from," he said. "I feel bad for Harrison Farms, because they are going to get blamed for the whole thing."

Doctors with the CDC and the FDA said during a conference call Friday they are looking at different clusters of the outbreak and "have narrowed it down to a couple of dozen farms."

They reiterated warnings to consumers not to eat romaine lettuce from the Yuma region. Public health officials said that covers whole heads, hearts and bags of shredded romaine lettuce and spring mixes.

In the past two days, 14 more people have been added to the list of those sickened in a national E. coli outbreak that began in March. Eight cases have been reported in Arizona.

That brings the total number of people sickened with the virulent bacterial infection to 98 in 22 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

Ill people range in age from 1 to 88 years. Pennsylvania, California and Idaho reported the largest number of cases.

The lack of information about a specific source had paralyzed lettuce growers in Arizona and California, who produce the vast majority of the nation's lettuce.

Farms in the Yuma region supply North America with the vast majority of its leafy greens from January through March every year.

The prison's food supplier, Country Foods IGA of Kenai, confirmed the lettuce came from Yuma but could not provide the name of the grower.

Bill Marler, a nationally recognized food-safety lawyer in Seattle, represents 32 people who got sick from eating the lettuce, including seven people with kidney failure. Among those are a 13-year-old girl in New York who is now home on dialysis and a 6-year-old boy in California who has undergone three blood transfusions.

Marler said one of his clients is an Arizona woman who was hospitalized for five days. He said she became ill three days after eating a salad at a restaurant. The health department confirmed her case was connected to the national outbreak.

Illnesses that occurred in the past two to three weeks might not yet be reported because of the time between when a person becomes ill with E. coli and when the illness is reported to CDC.

The numbers of actual cases could fluctuate based on when they were reported and DNA tests. For instance, Alaska health officials said the eight inmates were positively linked to the outbreak, but the CDC so far is only counting five Alaska cases.

Includes information from Arizona Republic reporter Bree Burkitt.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2018/04/27/98-sickened-e-coli-romaine-lettuce-single-farm/559714002/

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