WASHINGTON - Health officials on Wednesday zeroed in on lettuce as the likely suspect in the E. coli outbreak linked to Taco Bell, though tracing the vegetable's source may prove difficult.
The outbreak apparently has run its course after 71 confirmed cases of the disease in five states, primarily New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, officials said.
Investigators considered cheddar cheese and ground beef as possible contaminated ingredients before settling on lettuce. The company first believed green onions were responsible, but follow-up testing by the government failed to confirm that.
Interviews with patients and other investigative work pointed toward lettuce as the culprit.
"That I would say is the most likely vehicle. I would warn we are not done with the investigation," Dr. Christopher Braden, a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters.
Taco Bell's menu, with its various combinations of the same ingredients, made it difficult to pinpoint the source of the contamination.
"That has been the case and is part of the reason it has taken a number of days to identify what might be the contaminated ingredient," Braden said.
Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer at the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition discussed plans to trace the lettuce to its source. But because the shredded lettuce was processed in bulk, that could turn out to be a hard task.
The evidence that lettuce was responsible for the illnesses was statistical — it was the item that victims most commonly reported eating.
Taco Bell's president, Greg Creed, said the CDC and FDA told the company "it was highly unlikely it's cheese or beef because cheese is pasteurized and the beef preparation ruled them out."
He declined to identify the supplier of the lettuce to the Northeastern restaurants, said 80 percent of the lettuce from that supplier did not go to Taco Bell and noted Taco Bell has a new supplier for those states.
The lettuce potentially linked to the outbreak came from the West, he said, declining to be more specific.
Acheson said no Taco Bell food samples, other than white onions from a New York restaurant, have tested positive for E. coli, Acheson said. The E. coli found in the white onion did not match the strain that sickened Taco Bell customers, however.
He said there is no evidence the Taco Bell outbreak is connected to cases of illnesses linked to Taco John restaurants in Iowa and Minnesota.
Health officials in those states said the cause of the outbreak — which has sickened at least 50 people in Iowa and 27 in Minnesota — has been tied to lettuce served at Taco John's in three cities.
Most E. coli infections are associated with undercooked meat, but increasingly produce is to blame. This fall, an outbreak linked to fresh spinach killed three people and sickened more than 200 others.
"This is a situation that is not tenable," Braden said.
Health officials believe most cases of E. coli contamination originate on the farm, where produce can come into contact with animal feces laden with the bacteria.
E. coli, or Escherichia coli, is a common and ordinarily harmless bacteria found in the guts of cattle and other animals. The E. coli O157:H7 strain can cause abdominal cramps, fever, bloody diarrhea, kidney failure, blindness, paralysis, even death.
Produce has been around for a long time, so why the explosion of E.coli contamination in the last decade or so?
And why are the E.coli detectives always able to track the bacteria back to one step away from its source, but never to the source?
Those are some good questions... especially the second, about why they can't get to THE source. I would love to know that too. I'm assuming that if it's actually people trying to "cause" this, that they are able to cover their tracks, so-to-speak.
:::>^..^<::: ~*~The Journey is more important than the end or the start~*~ :::>^..^<:::
The students will clear out by this weekend though, so hopefully it will be slow.
I eat bunches of Taco Bell, ain't got sick, ain't worried about getting sick.
And lastly, I am invicible. I don't believe in germs.
for some odd reason, while the word "Ganya" was still just a thought-dropping in my head, I thought it'd only be four letters. But apparently it's five. yep.
A few days ago my coworker just yelled out "E. COLI!" while he was making food.
customer reaction was hilarious.
for some odd reason, while the word "Ganya" was still just a thought-dropping in my head, I thought it'd only be four letters. But apparently it's five. yep.
More than 250 fall ill after eating at Indiana Olive Garden
Last Updated: Friday, December 15, 2006 | 3:19 PM ET
CBC News
More than 250 people were sickened after eating at an Olive Garden in Indianapolis, a local health official said Friday.
Some of the customers who ate at the restaurant in the northeast region of the city between Dec. 9 and Dec. 13 said they suffered nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fever, a spokesman for the Marion County Health Department told Reuters.
Three people have been hospitalized and tests are expected to be completed within 48 hours.
A recent E. coli outbreak at Taco Bell restaurants in the northeastern United States sickened 71 people in five states. U.S. officials suspect lettuce caused the outbreak but continue to investigate the case.
Whidden said this in post #12 :
More than 250 people were sickened after eating at an Olive Garden in Indianapolis, a local health official said Friday.
It will be interesting to learn whether or not the culprit was E.coli, and whether it originated within the restaurant or at a farm in California.
In the news this morning, they said that this was the second big outbreak of food poisoning in the last couple weeks. It is acutally the third. Don't forget what happened at Taco Johns in Iowa and Minnesota last week. I wonder where their poision lettuce came from.
We did finally get an explanation for the E. coli in the spinich a few weeks back. It seems that some wild pigs took some manure from a cattle ranch, and put it into the spinach field not too far away. I guess they thought it would be funny.
I don't know, the old timers in ages past cooked the fire outta everything, as they knew it would kill them. I'm no history buff, but I do wonder how much raw produce they ate. If I had to guess, I would say not very much.
Carrots, spinach, all the rest, I bet they cooked it. Now lettuce, I don't know. I don't know how popular it was in the olden days, say the last few thousand years. If they did eat it, I'm sure they washed it.
I got no clue. Maybe terrorists. But if they was doing something, they would lay claim to it.
I know that the health nazi's get into trouble when they go too far with the organics and the "no" pasteurization crap. That little girl died here a few years back after she drank apple juice that had not been pasteurized. All I know is produce is far from safe, and modern day America has gotten the notion that uncooked vegetables and produce are somehow free of things that will make you sick.
12-14-2006 06:19 PM
