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CDC: Do Not Eat Any Romaine Lettuce Until Further Notice (wired.com)
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out an unusually strong statement telling Americans to toss any romaine lettuce in any form: whole, chopped, pre-bagged into Caesar salads, combined into spring mix, and so on. The warning covered not just homes but retailers and restaurants, and came with a recommendation to empty any fridge where romaine has been stored, and wash it out with soap and warm water. From a report: The CDC said it was making the recommendation to not eat, serve or sell any romaine lettuce because 32 people in 11 states, plus 18 people in Ontario and Quebec, have been made ill by E. coli O157:H7, which causes very serious illness because it produces a toxin that destroys cells lining the intestines and kidneys. The patients are all infected with the same strain, based on genetic fingerprinting, and the only thing they have in common is that they all ate romaine.
But, the CDC said, "no common grower, supplier, distributor, or brand of romaine lettuce has been identified." The agency isn't usually so sweeping in its statements, but with a holiday coming -- one that's centered around eating and that takes people offline into the real world of airports and cars and dinner tables -- it warned against all romaine until the threat can be better defined. The Food and Drug Administration, which does have the power to compel foods to be recalled, is investigating, along with health departments in the 11 states where people have gotten sick.
But, the CDC said, "no common grower, supplier, distributor, or brand of romaine lettuce has been identified." The agency isn't usually so sweeping in its statements, but with a holiday coming -- one that's centered around eating and that takes people offline into the real world of airports and cars and dinner tables -- it warned against all romaine until the threat can be better defined. The Food and Drug Administration, which does have the power to compel foods to be recalled, is investigating, along with health departments in the 11 states where people have gotten sick.
I read no other news, so I messed this when it came out two days ago. So I ate romaine lettuce and now I am shitting my pants.
The CDC said it was making the recommendation to not eat, serve or sell any romaine lettuce because 32 people in 11 states, plus 18 people in Ontario and Quebec, have been made ill by E. coli O157:H7, which causes very serious illness because it produces a toxin that destroys cells lining the intestines and kidneys.
Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?
I'll make sure to heed this advice for the next few rest of my life.
Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?
If you have limited means of growing produce, you wouldn't want to waste it on crunchy water.
Undeveloped countries don't have the infrastructure to monitor these types of things because they are undeveloped.
Also, developed countries have far more developed food safety standards because they are developed.
Really, the big clue on this is your own use of the word "developed".
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Sad.
Because high levels of cross contamination only occurs in industrialized farming. You're safe if you grow your own or buy your romaine at an old fashioned farmer's market.
Shitting for days is the price you pay for cheap, convenient food.
Because nobody gives a fuck why someone in Africa croaks.
People die on this continent by the thousands, daily, from avoidable diseases, from wars that nobody know about because they ain't even worth a ticker message on CNN, from mining the metals we need for our next cellphone that we use for a year, if that, and a million other things.
And nobody, literally nobody, gives a fuck.
You are still wondering why these people try to escape that hellhole? I don't.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you want it done the other way, you support the multinational that will gladly provide an environment that will manage to be both carcinogenic and contagious at the same time. Their rank and file may not be able to afford to eat what they produce... not that they'd actually want to.
Factory-farming and large-scale food production are the problem.
Eating should never be centralized; keep it local.
... the organic momo's that believe they will never die by eating only organic ?
E-Coli is organic.. 100%...
There are plenty of organic things that will kill ya..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Because 32 people getting a little sick in a country of 325,000,000 isn't worth batting an eye over in any country with any serious problems to deal with. 1 in 10 million people getting sick? Just drinking the municipal water sickens way more than that in most countries.
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... in Germany a few years back. The so called EHEC scandal. (Can't recall if EHEC is the pathogen out the disease it causes). It wasn't pretty. For weeks the republic was frantically tracking down the source and found it in a farm that had basically used raw sewage to fertilize grown sprouts. A few people died a painful death iirc. Don't know if anybody went to jail. This is sort of a borderline case in which dumb Farmers can actually kill people. I don't know if they changed some growing regulations or something after that.
Bottom line: don't think the CDC is exaggerating, this could likely be serious.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It's not crunchy water to blame, it is migrant farm workers not being given bathroom breaks and so taking shits in the fields instead. "transmission occurs through fecal contamination of food and water supplies" --Wikipedia
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Crunchy water refers to the low nutritional value of lettuce, meaning that only developed countries would take the trouble to grow this product.
Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?
Maybe the local folks in under developed countries have more of an acquired or natural immunity to nasty critters in the water that would make a lot of developed country folks get the backdoor trots?
This is why some of the critters that Europeans schlepped into the New World wreaked havoc among the natives.
Jarod Diamond covered diseases as being one of the things that a civilization needs to conquer another in a book titled, "Guns, Germans and Steel" .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Because people in undeveloped countries often fall ill to gastro-intestinal diseases and die sooner as a result. Since there's bigger fish to fry in those countries, they put things like "not getting the runs" below "managing to not die from exposure".
In developed countries issues like "local wildlife ate my baby" don't happen (often) and thus we have time to care about "OMG toilet NAOW" and thus we make sure places that are selling us food don't accidentally sell us food that gives us diarrhoea.
I'm surprised I have to explain this, to be honest.
So dead is "a litte sick"?
Jarod Diamond covered diseases as being one of the things that a civilization needs to conquer another in a book titled, "Guns, Germs and Steel" .
FTFY. But your original was unintentionally funny.
I cannot recommend Diamond's book ighly enough. It was a long, but very enlightening read for me. For the TL/DR crowd: his thesis is that the rise and dominance of European civilization was primarily a fluke of geography that allowed its inhabitants to cultivate crops and form specializations in society earlier than other parts of the world.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
> [CDC] isn't usually so sweeping in its statements, but with a holiday coming...
Seriously? If (like me) you were wondering whether that clanger came from the CDC itself or the vapid press (Wired in this case), it's the latter.
Weed? From Africa?
Please.
Palm oil and cocoa is what they really export to us. Any palm oil not coming from the far east is probably from Nigeria. And palm oil is in pretty much EVERYTHING today. It's the cheap replacement for pretty much any other fats we used to have in our processed foods.
Enjoy your dinner.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I cannot recommend Diamond's book highly enough.
Doh, irony. I correct someone else's typo, then make one of my own. Sorry.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
As a small farmer, this is a systemic problem with our industrial food producers, and you will not find a more compelling reason for joining a local Community Supportrd Agriculture (CSA) program. You could be having fresh romaine today, if you have personally verified your farmers and their production methods.
I offer such a package through a farmshare program; however, I do not sell to the public, because I do not trust our food safety programs at any level. They are literally worthless to me and my customers.
The USDA and state ag divisions exclusively serve large producers. Their policies and rules actively discriminate against small producers. Meat processors that serve small producers are shutting down at a time when production is going up. Subsidies make food less expensive to buy in the store than in costs to produce, and small farmers that have integrity do not participate in those programs. Organic verification is a farce that allows big producers to continue their business as usual; they still spraying poisons and âoetreatedâ sewage on your food.
I hope the CDC gets sued by all of the small producers that have been affected by this. They cannot afford to take a hit like the big producers can. The CDC just lost a huge amount of credibility with me.
Read the other answers. Summary: people in developing countries have more immediate things to worry about.
Also they don't have the same kind of news media trying to troll them 24/7.
"migrant farm workers" likely aren't the major source of contamination. Think bird shit, coyote shit, rabbit shit. There's no water treatment for field water - so the water coming out of the sprinklers is pulled straight out of the ditch/river which may be contaminated by the feedlot upstream. All of which are sources of "fecal contamination".
And the worms ate into his brain.
Spinach is always cooked in India, and we have so many kinds of spinach too. There are uncooked foods in Indian cuisine, the chutneys, raitha, kosumari ... but usually they manage to avoid contamination. Now I have lost all immunity. I avoid uncooked foods in all restaurants there.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?
Maybe the local folks in under developed countries have more of an acquired or natural immunity to nasty critters in the water that would make a lot of developed country folks get the backdoor trots?
Having lived in a third world country where people do not know basic rules of sanitation, I can promise you that this is not the case. They have all kinds of illnesses that they blame on being outside when it rains rather than the really disgusting water they should have filtered and then added a little bleach to. I've spent a lot of time hanging out with the people in their little shanty towns and they're constantly sick.
... .lettuce not deny the seriousness of the issue.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
No, all it takes is a nurse with political ties to be allowed back in the country for no good reason.
https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/29...
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Small and organic farmers have significantly higher rates of e.coli contamination that large industrial farms.
Read Journal of Food Protection, or "Preharvest Evaluation of Coliforms, Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Organic and Conventional Produce Grown" for more information.
Up to 19 times more e. coli, in fact.
So dead is "a litte sick"?
No, dead is a lot sick. I don't know how many of the 32 US people who were diagnosed with e. coli actually died from the disease; do you? At any rate, I think the post you were replying to was just suggesting a bit of perspective. In a country where 40,000 people per year die in automobile accidents, 32 people getting sick - whether it's a little or a lot - doesn't seem like something that should cause a lot of hand-wringing. The CDC has issued their warning and investigators will eventually get to the root cause. In the meantime, avoid the stuff that might be bad.
If you have to explain the joke, it means it didn't work.
There was no joke.
Sucks to be a Romaine lettuce grower right now.
Well, that put a quick end to the vegans' gloating over the ground turkey salmonella, now didn't it?
Europe has also had it's own share of E Coli outbreaks with produce. The OP's sanctimony is entirely unwarranted.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Last year 80K Americans died from the flu.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Granted, I may have been Poed. But on this site, I find it's better to err on the side of sincerity when someone is trolling.
It's funny how Poe's Law is kind of orthogonal to Hanlon's Razor.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
So dead is "a little sick"?
They're not dead, they're resting.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Great question. Expect it to go completely unanswered.
Your gut should kill anything if you are healthy. Although there is still cross contamination to consider (touching your face).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yes, they did. It was an exceptionally bad year. But I notice nobody was lining up to be the target in a sneezing contest.
Since it;'s not a big deal for people to not eat one particular variety of lettuce, it seems like a perfectly reasonable precaution.
Because that's where you live. If you lived, for example, in El Salvador, you would hear about this kind of thing in El Salvador, too. Not as often though, because an outbreak in New York will be reported in San Francisco, whereas an outbreak in Colombia might not be reported in El Salvador.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?
Part of the reason is that developed countries have more press, all competing for the ad-sponsored audience. I.e. you hear about it more.
Part of it is the distribution mechanism, where produce from one place makes it to hundreds of different markets under different brand names. It's being fought somewhat with the "farm to table" movement, which if nothing else helps restrict outbreaks.
And part of the reason is that people in developed countries have crappy immune systems, having been overproteced all their lives. The threshold for an infection turning into a disease is much lower if you don't have a primed immune system.
Wrong. Food safety in Europe is proactive
Last I checked, Europe was considered an area of developed countries.
I prefer the devil's lettuce, thank you very much.
So, it is not true that this is a rare problem
There are over 327,000,000 people living in the US of A, and around 2,800,000 deaths per year. .1% of the deaths, or a .0009% risk of dying from foodborne diseases in the next year.
3,000 is
So no, it's not rare. It's very rare.
Undeveloped countries don't have the infrastructure to monitor these types of things because they are undeveloped.
... and when it is measured it is sky high. Childhood diarrhea in poor countries is one of the world's leading causes of death, killing more than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.
32 sick people wouldn't make the news in Africa or India because it is insignificant compared to the thousands of kids dying everyday.
Water in Vegetables
Quote:
"A variety of vegetables have a water composition above 90 percent. Cucumbers and iceberg lettuce contain the highest amount because they're 96 percent water. Ninety-four percent to 95 percent of celery, tomatoes and zucchini consists of water. You can choose from broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, sweet peppers and spinach for vegetables composed of 91 percent to 93 percent water. Carrots are rated as having 87 percent, while green peas are 79 percent water."
I suspect the most likely source of shit is from the ground, where they use cow manure.
Hilarious. Meanwhile "organic" produce is much more likely to be contaminated with ecoli exactly because you literally use shit to fertilize it. Those horrible "industrialized" farms use synthetic fertilizers which don't have that problem.
We'll have no trouble here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Small and organic farmers have significantly higher rates of e.coli contamination that large industrial farms.
Yes, we should totally run with Big Ag's bullshit projections and false narrastives and freak out about naturally-occurring bacteria growing in the fucking soil like it always has. Fuck off with your projections and false narratives, shill.
Ack... typos galore.
You do realize that all citizens have a right to return to their nations?
There is no 'being allowed back in', a nation cannot deny entry to one of its nationals under international law. To do so, they would have to strip their citizenship which would make them a Stateless Person which is in violation of other treaties and international laws.
If you are not going to bother to learn the way things have worked since, well, at least Westphalia, then maybe you should reserve commenting.
There are plenty of organic things that will kill ya..
Like nightshade, hemlock. Various mushrooms. Many berries.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?
Because those drop lots of pig piss and cow dung on the lettuce fields. And unfortunately the IQ of farmers drop with the money they make (or spent on machines) and drop piss and dung on lettuce a week before harvest.
We had the same problem a few years ago in Germany (and other parts of Europe), 20 or 50 died. They put the remains of bio gas production, basically fermented and dried dung on lettuce fields that are already ready to be harvested. Took weeks to figure what kind of lettuce it is, what "company" is distributing it and from which farmers it came and why it was contaminated.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
That is why in Thailand the least shelf area is reserved for palm oil, they export everything :D
Honestly, most oil here is peanuts, then comes rice oil and a bit of maize, then obviously in the high price range coconut.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
A car accident is called an accident because: it is a an accident.
If you want to nitpick, yes: some of them could have been avoided 'somehow'. Nevertheless it is kinda if "karma" or "misfortune" or "destiny" to die in an accident.
32 infections by a deadly strand of e. coli: most certainly can be avoided. And on the other hand: not dying in a car accident is super simple: don't be there. Not dying to e. coli is not to simple, it can be in any lettuce or vegetable.
So, we have 32 cases. Agency issues warning. People stop eating the lettuce in question. Nothing happens, no one (or only the 32 die), your conclusion: stupid fear mongers, it was not that dangerous after all!
You are just like the idiots in germany who every year shout: "why do we have stupid storm warnings? Never ever anything is happening than a roof here or there destroyed!" Nevertheless we have always idiots ignoring the warnings because of fore said mantra. And about 10 die every year. And what do the survivours say: "oh! oh! no one told us it was so serious, it looked like a 'standard' warning like EVERY YEAR!" For Funk Sake: if there IS A WARNING it is SERIOUS!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Also they don't have the same kind of news media trying to troll them 24/7.
They actually have. There are not many places in the world (outside of the USA, pun intended) that have no or bad internet connections.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Actually American support for Irish terrorism was all a huge misunderstanding. People thought they were paying into their tax-deferred retirement plans.
The threshold for an infection turning into a disease is much lower if you don't have a primed immune system. ...
Yeah, no comment to your other idioticies
Perhaps you might want to read a little bit of the summary:
have been made ill by E. coli O157:H7, which causes very serious illness because it produces a toxin that destroys cells lining the intestines and kidneys
Part of the reason is that developed countries have more press, all competing for the ad-sponsored audience. ... did you miss? Since when is the CDC an ad-sponsored agency?
Yeah, and that is why they warn you? Which part of The CDC said
The immune system is not primed against e. coli because e. coli are standard symbionts of the human intestine system. So? Do you grasp this? Regardless how strong your immune system is, you are always prone to get an "e. coli infection" during travels. That severity has strongly gone down over the last 50 years due to increased world travel, though.
So, back to topic, what happens if the 32 patients (or more) lose both their kidneys? Suppose they can not get a transplant (how is the situation in our days in the US with Obama Care and all such? Can an ordinary person receive a transplant?) so they are put on dialysis ... How much does that cost per year? According to a quick google $90,000 per patient. Obviously the CDC and the health care insurances like to keep those costs down. Not to talk about the hardship in life such a life long treatment means.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Better late than never.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
because developed countries live too cleanly, and therefore can't handle a little bacteria.
Although not always possible, stuff like this is a great reason to buy from local farms when possible, it may cost a bit more but with stuff like the Romaine issue happening every now and again, it's a bit of extra insurance...
Not sure if buying "Organic" would really mean local though, so that's probably not good enough without knowing where it really came from.
Those of you living in warm places should look into growing lettuce in your own pots, it works really well and is not fussy to keep alive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Don't blame us in the UK. We didn't vote romaine.
shin phantomflanflinger
It's not like E.Coli is magically linked to "crunchy water".
Yes in this case it very much is.
However you are still falling into the zero risk choice fallacy. That is stopping to eating Romaine lettuce has no risk associated with it. Of course you don't just stop eating Romaine lettuce, you replace it with something else which also has a none zero risk associated with it.
Tragically sometimes the replacement item can have a higher risk. A classic example occured in the UK in 1996 over BSE. Big scare you might get new variant CJD from eating beef, so lets just stop eating beef. Instead they ate more chicken and pork in particular and there where over 1200 excess deaths from salmonella in the following 12 months. Meanwhile there have been less than 300 deaths from new variant CJD (and none for several years now) all in people who had been "infected" prior to 1996.
To further put this into context more people in the USA will die each year from accidents while getting dressed in the morning. Perhaps we should all go around naked instead, or never change our clothes, both of which also have none zero risks associated with them.
"migrant farm workers" likely aren't the major source of contamination.
Yes, yes they are.
Think bird shit, coyote shit, rabbit shit.
Coyotes and rabbits shit on the ground. Bird shit is not a major problem because of its nature. The problem really is not providing enough bathrooms and/or bathroom breaks to migrant workers, who really are shitting between the rows because they have nowhere else to shit and no time to shit anywhere else even if there were somewhere. In fact, there are scarcely any animals besides birds in the fields any more because Big Agribusiness has mandated that their habitats should be destroyed. If you want to sell greens to one of these big ag companies you have to clear forests and such around your plots specifically because Big Ag has mandated such as a means of dealing with the pathogen problem. It's not working specifically because the animals are not the problem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why would you assume that non-lettuce produce is immune to contamination?
Ezekiel 23:20
A car accident is called an accident because: it is a an accident. If you want to nitpick, yes: some of them could have been avoided 'somehow'. Nevertheless it is kinda if "karma" or "misfortune" or "destiny" to die in an accident.
32 infections by a deadly strand of e. coli: most certainly can be avoided. And on the other hand: not dying in a car accident is super simple: don't be there. Not dying to e. coli is not to simple, it can be in any lettuce or vegetable.
So, we have 32 cases. Agency issues warning. People stop eating the lettuce in question. Nothing happens, no one (or only the 32 die), your conclusion: stupid fear mongers, it was not that dangerous after all!
You are just like the idiots in germany who every year shout: "why do we have stupid storm warnings? Never ever anything is happening than a roof here or there destroyed!" Nevertheless we have always idiots ignoring the warnings because of fore said mantra. And about 10 die every year. And what do the survivours say: "oh! oh! no one told us it was so serious, it looked like a 'standard' warning like EVERY YEAR!" For Funk Sake: if there IS A WARNING it is SERIOUS!
Wow, you need to calm down. I didn't say the CDC are "stupid fear mongers" or that e. coli isn't dangerous; I said the numbers are small, people shouldn't panic, and the bad stuff should be avoided. I stand by that. I don't understand why you think this is connected in any sane way to prople who ignore storm warnings because "it won't happen to me" and then whine when it does happen to them.
As to accidents: if you think it's "misfortune" to join the tens of thousands of people killed in cars every year, but not to be one of 32 in a population of 320 million to eat a bad leaf of lettuce, you need to re-examine the logic that got you there.
The immune system is not primed against e. coli because e. coli are standard symbionts of the human intestine system. So? Do you grasp this? Regardless how strong your immune system is, you are always prone to get an "e. coli infection" during travels.
Read what you yourself wrote, and then digest the implication of the last two words. During travels. Natives do not get affected as much as travellers.
This is precisely because the immune system is primed to deal with the strains of pathogens that it has already encountered.
So, back to topic, what happens if the 32 patients (or more) lose both their kidneys?
That is personal outcome, not risk. The two are separate concepts. While the individual consequences is enormous to the afflicted, the risk of it happening in the first place is minuscule. The risk of being hit by a Ford F-150 in Texas is much higher, and what happens then can certainly be tragic too. That doesn't imply that Texas should necessarily ban Ford F-150s.
That is personal outcome, not risk. The two are separate concepts. While the individual consequences is enormous to the afflicted, the risk of it happening in the first place is minuscule. The risk of being hit by a Ford F-150 in Texas is much higher, and what happens then can certainly be tragic too. That doesn't imply that Texas should necessarily ban Ford F-150s.
That is a silly argument. As people can not plan not to encounter F-150s. However they can prevent eating that lettuce and hence lower or remove the risk to be affected by that particular e. coli. So yes: that risk can be managed and from the point of view of the society aka health insurance aka hospitals, it is worth it.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.