Bagged Lettuce and Spinach Outbreaks
After reviewing recent E. coli outbreaks traced to bagged spinach and lettuce, some scientists have come to the conclusion that the way the greens were packaged was the primary reason for the wide-spread nature of the outbreaks. When lettuce or spinach is cut and bagged, one contaminated head of lettuce or bunch of spinach can contaminated numerous bags.
In particular, the centralized processing of fresh greens can increase the risk of more widespread contamination, just as tainted beef from one steer can find its way into hundreds of packages of ground meat, said Dr. David W.K. Acheson, chief medical officer at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
"If you have a single head of [tainted] lettuce that winds up in someone's home, makes the family sick, chances are it'll never get on the radar screen," Acheson said. "If you take the same lettuce, process it … one head may contaminate multiple bags. Then you've got an outbreak." (Los Angeles Times)
If you continue to buy bagged lettuce and spinach, be sure to wash it well. To learn about E. coli, please visit the Pritzker | Ruohonen website, www.pritzkerlaw.com.
Source: Mary Engel and Rong-Gong Lin II, Some food safety experts say the mixing of greens for packaging may increase the risk of contamination, Los Angeles Times, January 20, 2007.