Tampering Not Suspected in E. Coli Outbreak Linked to Spinach

WASHINGTON — Tampering is not suspected in an outbreak of E. coli linked to fresh spinach, federal health officials said Monday as they continue to probe the source of the contamination and warned consumers to continue to avoid fresh spinach products.

What bothers me is this quote from another article:

Since August 2, one person has died and 102 people have fallen ill, including 16 who suffered kidney failure after eating spinach suspected of being contaminated with the E. coli 0157:H7 -- a potentially deadly bacterium that causes bloody diarrhea and dehydration.
Source: U.S. expands warning to cover all fresh spinach

Since August 2?

Fresh leaf vegetables last 1-2 weeks, at most.

FEDS have known of this contamination for roughly 6 weeks now. And WE just found out about this --- starting last week?????

What have the 'officials' been doing for the last 6 weeks?????

Didn't the recall only begin this past week?

If a vegetable package lasts even 2 weeks, that would make some 3 generations of packages that made it to stores -- "Since August 2...."

How many bags have been sold for consumption since August 2?

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Side note: FoxNews reported this morning that some grocery stores have been found to be removing the 'packaged spinach' and replacing it on the vegetable shelves as 'fresh bundled loose spinach'. [Such store managers should be held criminally liable for that.]

"...just illegal immigrant workers who don't wash their hands afte going to the bathroom doing the picking and "washing" of the products prior to packaging. That's right. We must listen to what is NOT mentioned.

Mexicans have no problem defecating in the fields..and there is no wash basins..nor would they think to use them

I know this as FACT..worked for a company that used Mexicans to pick onions in the field. Now, I pull off at least the first three layers and meticulously wash the rest..

If the water source was the contamination..that does not exonerate the illegals..the ones we "need" to pick our produce...

Before we start sounding like the DU’ers blaming Bush and Rove for this outbreak, let’s have a reality check and not resort to politicizing the problem by blaming the illegals, damn hippies, meaning the organic food industry or al-Qaeda.

Spinach is a plant, plants are grown from seeds that are buried in the dirt, they live and grow in dirt and guess what - dirt is – well dirty.

As a kid I lived in a farming community in central PA. In the early spring the smell of the manure being spread on the fields was breath taking and I don’t mean in a good way. Long ago that’s how it was always done. Back when, farmers were doing organic long before it was vogue.

And don’t think for a minute that farmer Joe, sometime during a 17 hour day didn’t ever once take some “relief” in the field. There are no comfort stations or porta pots out on the back forty and I suspect farmer Joe didn’t carry around bottles of Purel around with him either so I don’t think that produce picker Juan is automatically to blame.

Birds fly over our farms and probably crap on crops much like they do on my just washed car. Bunnies, raccoons, foxes and other country critters like Bambi are also not all that particular about where they relive themselves. Nature is not a Disney movie, so get over it.

Terrorists are crazy f*%#s and I wouldn’t put anything past them but I doubt Bin Laden was sitting around one day thinking “lets bring down the infidels by giving them really bad diarrhea”. Besides, even if they did, if we stop eating spinach then the terrorists have won.

People sometimes get sick from contaminated foods and I suspect it happened more frequently in the past than we realize because such outbreaks did not become major media events. Today everything is a major news story thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, CNN, FOX, Greta, Nancy Grace, et all. Today I saw a live video feed from a helicopter on CNN about a scaffolding collapse at a construction site. In 1972 my dad nearly lost an arm in a similar accident and it didn’t even make the local news.

Think about foods that are not packaged; loose produce like apples and tomatoes. Think about all the people you see in your local grocery store who might have picked up and fingered that apple – I’ve seen my fellow man and all I can say is yuck!

This is the reason I wash newly purchased sheets, towels and underwear on my washing machine’s sanitary setting.

Perhaps the problem with bagged “pre-washed” spinach and other greens is that we’ve become complacent. We think that greens packaged in pretty plastic bags that we buy from our nice, well stocked, brightly lit, clean grocery stores playing easy listening music on the PA could never hurt us and we forgot that we should always wash our fruits and veggies before we eat them. I also recently thought that perhaps the plastic bags are part of the problem as they hold in heat and moisture providing the perfect breeding ground for nasty organisms.

It is also possible that we’ve become too sterile and lost some of our immunity to “bugs”. I’ve recently read that our over use of anti-bacterial agents and anti-biotics could be to blame for the dramatic rise of food allergies.

And finally let’s keep things in perspective. Probably millions of people have bought and ate bagged spinach over the last couple of months and right now we have about 100 illnesses and 1 death. While that is cause for concern, please tell Chicken Little that the sky is not falling.

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