Do NOT eat bagged spinach until further notice!

Dark Knight

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An outbreak of E. coli in eight states has left at least one person dead and 50 others sick, federal health officials said Thursday in warning consumers nationwide not to eat bagged fresh spinach.

The death occurred in Wisconsin, where 20 others were also sickened, said Dr. David Acheson of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. The outbreak has sickened others — eight of them seriously — in Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah.

FDA officials do not know the source of the outbreak other than it appears to be linked to bagged spinach. "We're advising people not to eat it," Acheson said.

The outbreak has affected a mix of ages, but most of the cases have involved women, Acheson told reporters in a conference call. He had no further information on the person who died.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Wisconsin health officials alerted the FDA about the outbreak Wednesday. Preliminary analysis suggests the same bug is responsible for the outbreak in all eight states.

The warning applied to consumers nationwide because of uncertainty over the origin of the tainted spinach and how widely it was distributed.

Health officials do not know of any link to a specific growing region, grower, brand or supplier, Acheson said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060915/ap_on_he_me/tainted_spinach_12&printer=1

 
yEP. i HEARD ABOUT THIS ON cnn TONITE..............JUST ABOUT 15 MINUTES AFTER i FINISHED MY RATHER LARGE SPINACH SALAD. My first thought was to stick my finger down my throat, but I decided it was to late for that anyway.So I called my husband who is out of town working and told him I was going to die. He told me to look it up and see what to look for if I have it. So now I have to wait 7 days to see if I get a severe case of bloody diarhea. Ain't life grand?????????????????? BTW I'm in California and it's not on the "affected states" list yet. How much ya wanna bet I'm the one that puts us there?!
 
Love it all ya want...but don't eat it!!!!!!!
 
trixie said:
Love it all ya want...but don't eat it!!!!!!!
I was going to eat some tonight then I seen that on the news.:eek:
 
:p :p :p :p :p :p :p Crack me up Trixie! :laugh: :doh: You can't win for losing. LOL You try to eat a healthy diet with fresh veggies, buy it pre-washed so you are sure all of the dirt is off {spinach is awful to get all the dirt off}.

I think the problem is they add gas to the package to keep it fresh and green, like they do lettuce. Maybe it caused the spinach to form this germ inside the bag. That's why I only buy leaf spinach from an open bin at New Seasons and select each leaf as I put it in my plastic sack. :rolleyes:

Thanks Dark Knight, you always keep us so well informed as to what's going on in the world! :blowkiss:

Scandi
 
I stopped buying any bagged salads since the previous outbreaks. I found it wasn't anymore convenient if ya have to worry about contamination and getting sick let alone dying from it. Now I just make a huge tupperware type container of fresh fixins and it lasts a lot longer than those bags ever did.
 
Thanks for the info, DK, I hadn't heard this news!
 
I just saw this on the news and it is really scary. Oregon is one of the states that is affected :eek:

Part of the helpless feeling is that there is no one brand that they have tracked the dangerous spinach to, any bagged brand is suspect. Wonder why they can't single it down more than that?

Hi Chico, Your post caught my eye about the Tupperware bowl to store lettuce. I usually have my salads out, as when I buy lettuce, it goes so fast, and I won't eat it if it starts to turn at the edges. And it is usually at a salad bar where I go, and I usually take spinach leaves to add to the lettuce. Won't do that anymore, as they might buy it bagged, right? :waitasec:

Do you use the green luttuce bowl with the removable spikie in the bottom? How do you prepare it? Wash it first and then do you have a spinner to get most of the water off? I'd love to know how you do it as I think salads are very important in a diet and would love to prepare them at home. Lettuce is very expensive in Oregon, so you have to make the most of it if you are going to buy it.

Thanks, Scandi
 
I use a rubbermaid tub about 10"wide 14"long and 5" deep, I forget what quart size it is. I just wash, shake a bit then chop (yes with a knife :eek: ) 2-3 heads of romaine and one small head of iceberg and add radishes, cukes etc. I don't fuss with spinning or worrying about the extra moisture when I toss it all in the container. It lasts days without going the least bit brown, stays crisp too and like you I won't eat lettuce if there is any brown at all...yuck. We eat a lot of salad lol When I used the bagged salad it was use it all at one sitting or the next day the chickens got salad. Always turned brown right away. I even had bought some that went bad the next day before I opened the bag...and the expiration date was days away. $$ down the drain and too much trouble to take it back for a refund cause the cost of the gas to take it back just didn't make it worth while so I stopped all bagged salads. Still use some bagged veggies like broccoli slaw and shredded cabbage but it seems to stay fresh and crisp much longer than the lettuce.

I no longer have the tupperware lettuce (or human head) container, lost track of it ages ago.
 
scandi said:
:p :p :p :p :p :p :p Crack me up Trixie! :laugh: :doh: You can't win for losing. LOL You try to eat a healthy diet with fresh veggies, buy it pre-washed so you are sure all of the dirt is off {spinach is awful to get all the dirt off}.

I think the problem is they add gas to the package to keep it fresh and green, like they do lettuce. Maybe it caused the spinach to form this germ inside the bag. That's why I only buy leaf spinach from an open bin at New Seasons and select each leaf as I put it in my plastic sack. :rolleyes:

Thanks Dark Knight, you always keep us so well informed as to what's going on in the world! :blowkiss:

Scandi
You're very welcome! If it's gonna kill ya, you'll hear it here first, lol! :crazy:
 
chicoliving said:
I stopped buying any bagged salads since the previous outbreaks. I found it wasn't anymore convenient if ya have to worry about contamination and getting sick let alone dying from it. Now I just make a huge tupperware type container of fresh fixins and it lasts a lot longer than those bags ever did.
I'm going to try that. It seems that lettuce goes bad in 3-4 days after you open it. Thanks!
 
I love spinach.
I cook it thou, since I had an attack about 8 years ago.
Man was I sick, McDonalds salad...
 
Thanks for the heads up! I had not heard of this. :D
 
scandi said:
:p :p :p :p :p :p :p Crack me up Trixie! :laugh: :doh: You can't win for losing. LOL You try to eat a healthy diet with fresh veggies, buy it pre-washed so you are sure all of the dirt is off {spinach is awful to get all the dirt off}.

I think the problem is they add gas to the package to keep it fresh and green, like they do lettuce. Maybe it caused the spinach to form this germ inside the bag. That's why I only buy leaf spinach from an open bin at New Seasons and select each leaf as I put it in my plastic sack. :rolleyes:

Thanks Dark Knight, you always keep us so well informed as to what's going on in the world! :blowkiss:

Scandi
Scandi, I also saw the news last night after watching Nancy Grace. The BarnGod doesn't really like raw spinach, so I don't buy the bags, even though I love it.

It's my understanding that the bagged spinach WAS prewashed. The gas does not cause germs to grow. E.coli infection comes from animal waste. It could be one particular farm that used an infected manure.

We have E.coli in our intestines. They are naturally present and harmless that way. Getting it from outside is what is dangerous and sometimes deadly.

http://people.ku.edu/~jbrown/ecoli.html

This will give you some information.

I remember a Medical TV show about apple juice and E.coli. Seems as if there were deer present in and near the orchard that caused the outbreak.
 
One of the women who almost died was here in my city. Here is her story from our local newspaper.

http://159.54.226.83/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060915/UPDATE/60914025

Her abdomen is sore, and her arms are covered with purple bruises.

Her kidneys and lungs are working at less than full capacity.

All because she ate one of her favorite foods: a spinach salad.

Gwyn Wellborn of Salem is recovering from a brush with death from E. coli poisoning that was traced to a bag of Dole baby spinach that she bought Aug. 21 at WinCo Foods on Lancaster Drive NE.

The 27-year-old wife and mother developed a rare complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome, a disease that affects the kidneys and the blood-clotting system.

She was in intensive care for several days, and doctors at Salem Hospital didn’t expect her to survive.

But several blood transfusions and plasma exchanges later, and after being transferred to Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Wellborn pulled through.

She now is home recovering with her husband, David, and their 21-month-old son, Dylan.

“I’m beyond lucky,” Gwyn Wellborn said. “The doctors said if I had nine lives, I used every single one of them.”
 
Thank you Anngelique, and I am thankful she is OK. I about fainted when I saw Oregon on the list :eek:

This morning on the news I heard the problem comes from one of two things - the processing plant or the farm where the spinach was grown.

I guess if there is feces in the dirt that gets on the spinach the ecoli must go into the leaves. Really scary, as pretty much all veggies we buy could be affected like this, right? Farmers have strict guidelines to follow.

I wonder if Dole buys thei 1
ur veggies from many different farms, and other distributers buy from them as well? It's probably how it is done, which is now why it is so hard to track down as to where this spinach came from.

What a problem!


Scandi
 
scandi said:
Thank you Anngelique, and I am thankful she is OK. I about fainted when I saw Oregon on the list :eek:

This morning on the news I heard the problem comes from one of two things - the processing plant or the farm where the spinach was grown.

I guess if there is feces in the dirt that gets on the spinach the ecoli must go into the leaves. Really scary, as pretty much all veggies we buy could be affected like this, right? Farmers have strict guidelines to follow.

I wonder if Dole buys thei 1
ur veggies from many different farms, and other distributers buy from them as well? It's probably how it is done, which is now why it is so hard to track down as to where this spinach came from.

What a problem!


Scandi

You're right. Any veggie can have it especially when grown in dirt. It is very scary. I also like baby spinach and I'm so thankful I didn't buy any recently. I almost did a couple weeks ago but I'm so glad I didn't.
 

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