Is Romaine Ok to Eat Again

A man shops for vegetables beside romaine lettuce for auction at a supermarket in Los Angeles. Frederic J. Brownish/AFP/Getty Images hibernate caption

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Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

A man shops for vegetables beside romaine lettuce for sale at a supermarket in Los Angeles.

Frederic J. Brownish/AFP/Getty Images

If you lot've avoided romaine lettuce because of the Eastward. coli outbreak, you can start buying it once again.

Afterwards weeks of warnings from the Centers for Disease Command and Prevention to toss out romaine grown in the Yuma, Ariz., region, the CDC says there are no longer any greens coming from this region.

The romaine that's for sale now in restaurants and supermarkets nationwide is coming from California's Salinas Valley.

In late March, officials at the state health department in New Jersey detected an increase in E. coli illnesses. When they interviewed people who had become ill, many said they had eaten chopped romaine salads. Laura Gieraltowski, who heads up the CDC'due south foodborne outbreak response squad, says New 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 ill."

At that point, the Food and Drug Administration began a trace back and adamant that the contaminated lettuce was grown in the Yuma region. But investigators could not smash downward an exact source.

"Unfortunately, they weren't able to become it dorsum to a single supplier, or distribution center, or a single farm. That'due south why we kept our messaging broad," Gieraltowski says.

The CDC's announcement 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 correct away. "Immediately, we stopped all shipment of romaine coming out of the desert."

McDonald says the industry was right in the middle of its seasonal transition: The harvest season was winding downwardly in Arizona — the last shipments of romaine from the region were harvested April 16, so that lettuce is at present well beyond its 21-twenty-four hours shelf life.

The week the CDC issued its warning, Taylor Farms had just begun to harvest and transport out greens grown in its California fields. These greens take non been linked to any contamination. But people were confused: How were they supposed to know where their greens were coming from?

"Information technology was easier, in many cases, for our customers just to stop [buying] romaine," McDonald says. After talking to his customers — who buy greens for chains and institutions — he was able to reassure them, he says.

After a big foodborne affliction outbreak linked to baby spinach dorsum in 2006, the leafy greens industry put in place a number of procedures to forestall contamination. "Prevention became the major focus after that outbreak," says Michele Jay-Russell, a food safety researcher at the University of California, Davis.

"They set up intensive testing protocols to monitor water quality," Jay-Russell says. The industry also agreed on standardized setbacks — or buffers — to separate growing fields from livestock operations, which tin be a source of E.coli contamination. "Y'all want a safe distance from where you lot're growing fresh produce and where you have concentrations of animals, like on a feedlot or dairy," she says.

As a result of these protocols, the condom tape has improved. "The reality is [when] you're growing produce exterior, you can't make it entirely sterile, so in that location'due south ever some level of risk," Jay-Russell says. Simply the protocols in place aid reduce the take chances.

"The corporeality of food safety attention [in the leafy greens industry] over the last ten years is remarkable," McDonald says. "It'southward our atypical focus."

Investigators still don't know what happened in the Yuma region. Their investigation continues. Information technology'south possible that runoff from a livestock operation contaminated a water supply, but that's just ane theory.

The CDC's Gieraltowski says the source can exist hard to blast down. "There's so many points in the distribution chain that leafy greens go through," she says. From the subcontract to processors to shippers, "there'due south a lot of dissimilar places for contamination to occur."

But now that lettuce grown in the Yuma region is likely no longer being sold in supermarkets or served in restaurants, Gieraltowski says, "Nosotros promise people can relish their romaine lettuce over again."

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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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