When Can You Start Eating Romaine Lettuce Again
A man shops for vegetables abreast romaine lettuce for sale at a supermarket in Los Angeles. Frederic J. Chocolate-brown/AFP/Getty Images hibernate caption
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A human being shops for vegetables abreast romaine lettuce for sale at a supermarket in Los Angeles.
Frederic J. Chocolate-brown/AFP/Getty Images
If you lot've avoided romaine lettuce because of the E. coli outbreak, yous can start buying it again.
After weeks of warnings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to toss out romaine grown in the Yuma, Ariz., region, the CDC says in that location are no longer any greens coming from this region.
The romaine that'due south for sale at present in restaurants and supermarkets nationwide is coming from California's Salinas Valley.
In late March, officials at the state health department in New Bailiwick of jersey detected an increase in E. coli illnesses. When they interviewed people who had become sick, many said they had eaten chopped romaine salads. Laura Gieraltowski, who heads upwards the CDC's foodborne outbreak response team, says New Bailiwick of jersey was quick to share this information.
"When they reached out to CDC, we looked into our surveillance system and saw that we had E.coli illnesses with the aforementioned Dna fingerprint from other states," she says. And they had similar reports from people in other states who said they had eaten romaine before getting sick."
At that point, the Nutrient and Drug Administration began a trace dorsum and adamant that the contaminated lettuce was grown in the Yuma region. But investigators could non smash down an verbal source.
"Unfortunately, they weren't able to become it back to a single supplier, or distribution center, or a single subcontract. That'south why nosotros kept our messaging broad," Gieraltowski says.
The CDC's declaration in mid-April to avoid romaine from Yuma brought chaos to Taylor Farms, a large salad producer with operations in both Arizona and Salinas Valley, Calif.
"Information technology blindsided us, and immediately a number of customers called," says Drew McDonald, vice president of quality and food safety. He says his company took action right abroad. "Immediately, nosotros stopped all shipment of romaine coming out of the desert."
McDonald says the industry was right in the eye of its seasonal transition: The harvest season was winding downwardly in Arizona — the terminal shipments of romaine from the region were harvested April sixteen, so that lettuce is now well beyond its 21-twenty-four hours shelf life.
The calendar week the CDC issued its warning, Taylor Farms had just begun to harvest and ship out greens grown in its California fields. These greens accept non been linked to whatsoever contamination. But people were dislocated: How were they supposed to know where their greens were coming from?
"It was easier, in many cases, for our customers merely to end [ownership] romaine," McDonald says. Later talking to his customers — who buy greens for chains and institutions — he was able to reassure them, he says.
After a large foodborne illness outbreak linked to infant spinach back in 2006, the leafy greens manufacture put in place a number of procedures to preclude contamination. "Prevention became the major focus after that outbreak," says Michele Jay-Russell, a food safety researcher at the University of California, Davis.
"They prepare intensive testing protocols to monitor water quality," Jay-Russell says. The industry also agreed on standardized setbacks — or buffers — to divide growing fields from livestock operations, which can be a source of E.coli contamination. "You want a safe distance from where yous're growing fresh produce and where you accept concentrations of animals, like on a feedlot or dairy," she says.
Every bit a result of these protocols, the safe record has improved. "The reality is [when] you're growing produce outside, you can't brand it entirely sterile, so at that place's always some level of take chances," Jay-Russell says. But the protocols in place help reduce the take a chance.
"The corporeality of food safety attention [in the leafy greens industry] over the concluding 10 years is remarkable," McDonald says. "Information technology'due south our singular focus."
Investigators still don't know what happened in the Yuma region. Their investigation continues. It'southward possible that runoff from a livestock operation contaminated a water supply, simply that's just ane theory.
The CDC'due south Gieraltowski says the source can be difficult to nail downwardly. "There'south and then many points in the distribution chain that leafy greens become through," she says. From the farm to processors to shippers, "there's a lot of unlike places for contamination to occur."
Simply now that lettuce grown in the Yuma region is probable no longer being sold in supermarkets or served in restaurants, Gieraltowski says, "We hope people can savor their romaine lettuce once more."
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/05/22/613254356/cdc-gives-the-all-clear-to-start-eating-romaine-lettuce-again
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