Posted on 05/02/2008 2:33:00 PM PDT by blam
Amoebas may vomit E. coli on your greens
13:59 02 May 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Ewen Callaway
Harmless protozoa that live on grocery store greens can shelter deadly food pathogens like E. coli and Salmonella.
A laboratory study has found that food pathogens survive being eaten by protozoa living on spinach and lettuce. The temporary asylum might help bacteria stick onto leafy greens or resist efforts to kill them before packaging.
Whether the shelter the protozoa provide contributes to pathogen outbreaks, however, remains to be seen.
A team led by microbiologist Sharon Berk, of Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, fed lab-grown bacterial pathogens to protozoa found on grocery store produce. Her team did not find the pathogenic bacteria on the supermarket veggies.
When Berk's team then examined the protozoa, they discovered the bacteria alive and well in their stomachs.
Sore tums
Apparently the pathogens upset the protozoa's digestion, though. A day after mixing E. coli O157:H7 (a harmful form of the bug) and Salmonella with protozoa, the team noticed that many of the bacteria had been "vomited" up into round clumps.
When the researchers added these clumps to pulverized spinach, the E. coli cells tripled in number after just a few hours.
Berk says she does not know whether protozoa are responsible for E. coli outbreaks, like that in 2006 that killed three and sickened hundreds of people who had eaten tainted spinach.
However, she says food safety researchers ought to now add pathogen-eating protozoa – which might prove more difficult to wash off of greens – to their list of possible dangers.
"I don't think you are every going to get them all off. Amoebae – they can be like glue," she adds.
'Smoking bag' Maria Brandl at the US Department of Agriculture in Albany,
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
And what is your take on this Blam?
I have a private vegetable garden and have, as a precaution, placed “Amoebas Keep Out” signs at the ends of each row. Since putting the signs in place, the incidence of Amoeba barf is down by eighty percent.
Oh, fgs....e coli is all around us, (and in us)....it’s those who have compromised immune systems that need to watch out....except, of course, in cases where someone (think Mexico fields) literally cr*ps on the food and it doesn’t get cleaned. Am I wrong here?
and all this time we were looking at the poor third world help packaging our Chinese delicacies
I've shied away from fresh leafy vegetables since the lettuce and spinach problems.
Well, at least the amoeba is just vomiting on our food, instead of cr*pping on it as well. (or do they?)
/johnny
“Amoebas may vomit E. coli on your greens”....
GACK!....and I may vomit greens on the floor.
Just add salt. It will absorb the little bitty vomit and you won’t even taste it..
What? No barf alert?
We ingest about a ton of lettuce and other greens per week and I always rinse off the “fully cleaned” stuff and sometimes even soak it in vinegar water, which, I’m told, kills bacteria. But who knows. So far, no e.coli, but I do worry. Maybe we’ve built up resistance to it.
Anyone really know how to kill the bacteria dead without damaging the produce?
That settles it — I am now whatever the opposite of a vegan is. At least two animals shall die, and one be put to hard labor (i.e. dairy) in the making of each of my meals.
Vegetables clearly aren’t safe. It’s all meat, bread and dairy for me ...
Bacon-Cheeseburgers, steaks and chicken wings ... woo hoo!
H
You never have this problem with marshmallows.
What is amoeba etiquette, anyway?
Do they need teeny tiny buckets and little cloths for their amoeba mouths?
Does Imodium help them at all?
Amoeba vomit is an excellent name for a rock band.
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