WASHINGTON, 16 September 2006 — Federal health officials worked yesterday to find the source of a multistate E. coli outbreak and warned consumers that even washing the suspect spinach will not kill the sometimes-deadly bacteria.
One person died and dozens of others were sickened in the nine-state outbreak, linked by Food and Drug Administration officials to bagged spinach.
“We need to strive to do even better so even one life is not lost,” said Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, FDA’s acting commissioner.
The FDA warned people not to eat bagged spinach and said washing it would not solve the problem because the bacteria is too tightly attached. “If you wash it, it is not going to get rid of it,” said Robert Brackett, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Nutrition.
The original outbreak was reported Thursday in eight states. Ohio became the ninth yesterday, with health officials reporting seven cases — one serious — there.
Meanwhile, supermarkets around the US began pulling packaged spinach from store shelves.
“We pulled everything that we have spinach in,” said Dan Brettelle, manager of a Piggly Wiggly store in Columbia, South Carolina.
Officials believes the spinach may have been grown in California, and federal and state health officials were there trying to pinpoint the source of the contamination.
E. coli is commonly present in animal manure. Brackett said the use of manure as a fertilizer for produce typically consumed raw, such as spinach, is not in keeping with good agricultural practices. “It is something we don’t want to see,” he told a food policy conference.
Nine states were reporting a total of 57 cases of E. coli, according to the latest tally yesterday.
The death occurred in Wisconsin, where 20 people were reported ill, 11 of them in Milwaukee. The outbreak has sickened others — nine of them seriously — in Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon and Utah. In California, state health officials said they were investigating a possible case there.
The outbreak has affected a mix of ages, but most of the cases have involved women, Acheson said. Further information on the person who died was not available.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Wisconsin health officials alerted the FDA about the outbreak at midweek. Preliminary analysis suggested the same strain is responsible for the outbreak in all nine states. Not all strains of the bacteria cause illness.
E. coli causes diarrhea, often with bloody stools. Most healthy adults can recover completely within a week, although some people — including the very young and old — can develop a form of kidney failure that often leads to death. Anyone who has gotten sick after eating raw packaged spinach should contact a doctor, officials said.
