A leading food safety microbiologist who has studied the topic of lettuce E. coli contamination remains concerned in the wake of the current E. coli O145 lettuce outbreak that bagged, pre-cut produce is riskier than whole vegetables.
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In a Washington Post story raising questions about a possible trade off between the convenience of bagged lettuce for consumers and the threat of E. coli, Michael Doyle said he has been avoiding bagged lettuce for years. Doyle directs the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.
E. coli contamination of bagged leafy greens has been a hot issue in the grocery and farming trades since 2006. That's when an outbreak of
E. coli O157:H7 in bagged baby spinach sickened 238 people nationwide and killed five. It was traced to a farm in Salinas County, California.
The topic has been revived by the
Freshway Foods lettuce E. coli outbreak in New York, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee involving colleges and a public school district in Wappingers Falls, New York. All together, 30 people are considered to be victims of the outbreak, including 12 who were hospitalized.
The two other HUS victims in the outbreak are school children from Wappingers Falls. Fortunately, there have been no deaths.
They all ate contaminated lettuce distributed to wholesalers and institutions by Ohio-based Freshway Foods. One of the smoking gun pieces of evidence was a previously unopened bag of Freshway shredded romaine lettuce that was distributed to Wappingers Falls schools. It tested positive for E. coli O145.
Children are more susceptible to HUS than anyone and the effects can last a lifetime. If you have legal questions about compensation to pay damages for your child's HUS syndrome, contact Pritzker Olsen at 1-888-377-8900 (Toll Free) or complete the contact form on the side of this web page. Besides currently representing an HUS victim from New York who was sickened in this outbreak, we have been leading practitioners for many years in the area of foodborne illness litigation.
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Doyle, the microbiologist, believes the problems with bagged leafy greens begin in the field, where soils can be contaminated with E. coli from the feces of cattle or wild animals. In a study published last year in the Journal of Food Protection, Doyle and several colleagues contaminated coring devices with soil that contained E. coli O157:H7.
The study showed how the bacteria spread from the coring equipment to heads of lettuce. Chlorine spray rinses did not kill enough of the bacteria to wipe it out.
"In a processing plant, you'd have to have walls and clean floors," Doyle told the Washington Post.. "But here, they're starting it right out in the dirt. It's a very hazardous practice."
James Gorny, senior adviser for produce safety at the Food and Drug Administration, said bagged greens represent a disproportionate number of recalls, chiefly because they're easier to identify than whole produce. But he told The Post that pre-cut produce is not inherently riskier than whole vegetables.
But Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the process of harvesting lettuce, chopping it or tearing it, washing and putting it in a bag is a process similar to mixing ground beef.
"You're taking lettuce that could be grown in different areas and batching it together. So if you've got one infected field, you're mixing it with lettuce that would otherwise be uninfected, and now the whole batch is contaminated."
As the Post's Lyndsey Layton reported, fresh-cut produce began in the food service industry in the 1980s and then migrated to retail shelves. According to Nielson Co. ratings, pre-cut salad mix was the top-selling fruit or vegetable between January 2009 and January 2010, outselling heads of lettuce by more than 2 to 1.
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That announcement from the Food and Drug Administration was paired with news that lettuce recalled by Ohio-based Freshway came from the same farm in Yuma, Arizona, that supplied Vaughn Foods of Moore, Oklahoma.
All that could change if the Food and Drug Administration confirms its suspicion that an 
Michael Caldwell, the Dutchess County health commissioner, said an initial stool sample from one of the children who was sick seemed to link it to the larger outbreak. In addition, a Freshway Foods lettuce sample from the school tested positive for E. coli.
The Food and Drug Administration press release on the lettuce E. coli outbreak said 12 of the victims were hospitalized and three contracted 
