Archive of April, 2024

Today (13 December 2018), the FDA announced that they have identified the outbreak strain in the sediment of a local irrigation reservoir used by a single farm owned and operated by Adam Bros. Farms in Santa Barbara county farms. However, this finding doesn’t explain all illnesses. The FDA traceback suggests that additional romaine lettuce shipped from other farms could also likely be implicated in the outbreak. Therefore, the water from the reservoir on this single farm doesn’t fully explain what the common source of the contamination. As of Dec. 13, our investigation yielded records from five restaurants in four different states that...

The 2018 year in search by Google showed that romaine was the second most-searched food in 2018. With top terms like romaine recall; romaine lettuce recall; lettuce recall; lettuce e. coli; and e. coli romaine lettuce topping the list. Obviously, the number of outbreaks caused it. The FDA Report The largest outbreak of E. coliO157:H7 in the United States in over a decade left five people dead and sickened 210 others in 36 states. In November the FDA issued a report entitled Environmental Assessment of Factors Potentially Contributing to the Contamination of Romaine Lettuce Implicated in a Multi-State Outbreak of E. coli O157:H7. In this report the FDA emphasized...

Looking at the outbreak data from theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that 2018 was one of the worst years for food safety outbreaks. The CDC investigated 28 outbreaks, much more than the eight outbreaks in 2017. While over 80 percent of foodborne illness not associated with an outbreak of infections and an increase in outbreaks does not necessarily mean that more people get sick, the increase in large outbreaks is nevertheless meaningful. It is true that technology has made it possible to spot minor outbreaks and tie them together. Local health authorities have received increased resources to collect and investigate...