E. coli in spinach, many ill, one dead

Health Issues Forum

Story Highlights

• Federal officials say 94 E. coli cases reported in 19 states
• FDA identifies Natural Selection Foods as source of E. coli outbreak
• Natural Selection Foods Web site says bagged spinach no longer available
• Washing spinach won't help get rid of E. coli, FDA warns


WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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.

The outbreak was traced to Natural Selection Foods, based in San Juan Bautista, California, and 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 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 the brand names Rave Spinach, Natural Selection Foods, Dole, Earthbound Farm, Trader Joe's, Ready Pac and Green Harvest.

State health officials received the first reports of illness August 25, and the FDA was informed on Wednesday, Acheson said.

The FDA warned people nationwide not to eat spinach. Washing won't get rid of the bacteria, though thorough cooking can kill it.

"We're waiting for the all-clear," said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. The university's medical center was treating a 17-year-old Kentucky girl for E. coli infection. That case had been listed as originating in 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.

Better safe than sorry

"We will do whatever is necessary to help protect the health and safety of the public," Earthbound Farm spokeswoman Samantha Cabaluna said in a statement.

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.

"We are telling everyone to get rid of fresh bagged spinach right now. Don't assume anything is over," Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said.

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.

Tennessee had been mistakenly placed on an earlier list.

The bug has sickened at least 94 people across the nation, the CDC said. The agency added that 29 people have been hospitalized, 14 of them with kidney failure.

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 annual 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.

Washing won't help

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, South Carolina.

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.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

I'm a spinach eater... but, there isn't a leaf of it in my house, currently. It's really scary, wondering just HOW this happened. Was it an accident, or something else?

Glad to hear all is okay at your domicile. Everyone else okay?

I'm going to buy up all the spinach I can.

I am invincible.

That's great to know, Dekka... enjoy!


I'm seriously worried about my brother, because he is a daily spinach eater, and he has a bunch at home that he's not planning on throwing out.

I'd be worried, too. Reports say this kind can't be washed out -- it's in the spinach leaves. Heck, down here in Texas they're telling folks to throw out the frozen spinach they have, as well as the bagged -- everything since Aug 1.

I quit eating all that bagged salad product last year. I got sick after eating a salad, and called Dole about it the next day. I was given a long, detailed and informative explanation of how it is processed and washed, so I decided to keep eating it. Then about one month later, there was a huge outbreak of sickness in Minneapolis from E-coli from bagged salad. Some people got incredibly sick and spent several days in the hospital. No more bagged salad for me.

I read that there has been 19 outbreaks of E-Coli poisoning from bagged salad since 1995. Dateline had a big special on it about 6 months ago or so. The most interesting detail is that they do not know where it is coming from. There are many possibilities and lots of finger pointing. They are not even sure if it comes from the salad or from contamination to the outside of the bag that gets transfered to the salad as the consumer handles it.

We have had E - Coli outbreaks in the UK before and I can tell that 0157 is nasty and I thin the worst, it killede a few nursery school children a few months back and back in the 90's it knocked off around 80 people but the majority of the deaths were old or people who had been sick and the immune system had not recovered.

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The number of people sickened by an E. coli outbreak traced to tainted spinach rose to 109 on Sunday, as federal officials announced more brands recalling their products.

"This is unquestionably a significant outbreak in terms of E. coli," said Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer with the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Natural Selection Foods LLC, the world's largest producer of organic produce, has been linked to the infected greens, prompting a recall of 34 brands. Those brands include the company's own labels and those of other companies that had contracts with Natural Selection, based in San Juan Bautista, California, to produce or package its spinach.

On Sunday, River Ranch Fresh Foods of Salinas, California, added to its recall spring mixes containing spinach that were sold under the labels Hy Vee, Fresh and Easy, and Farmers Market, FDA officials said. All contain spinach purchased from Natural Selection, they said.

its a good thing i cook mine

Popeye is deformed. Look at him. Dudes on steroids.

There has been much talk about finding the source of the contamination and what it might be. Several possibilities have been suggested such as contaminated irrigation water and bird droppings, but the most curious possibility that I have heard is contamination by an infected worker. An infected worker? As in one, single infected worker?

Apparently E. coli will multiply when introduced to a conducive medium. But is it really possible that contamination from one person could introduce enough E. coli into the spinach packaging process to multiply enough to contaminate tons of product being shipped to half the states in the country?

If this is possible, how can bagged greens ever be safe? How do you make sure that there are no pickers who have failed to wash their hands?

They say they have ruled out sabotage, but have not found the cause yet. If you don’t know the cause, how can you rule out one of the possibilities?

I heard one theory that the workers are using the fields for the bathroom.

That Dateline report said they had porta pottys, but when the boss aint around, and there are no cameras, who knows what those migrant workers are thinking?

The bottom line is that the bagged food companies try to save a buck by processing in the field. The conditions are ripe for things like this to happen.