Salad bar safe, romaine OK
Lettuce rejoice: You may now safely rekindle your romance with romaine. Federal health officials have concluded that the tainted lettuce that sickened 172 people across 32 states, and killed one, is no longer available for sale.
“The romaine lettuce being sold and served today is not the romaine linked to illnesses,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tweeted May 16.
Scott Gottleib, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, tweeted a similar message: “Consumers can be confident that romaine currently available for purchase is not part of the investigation.”
This spring FDA investigators traced the virulent strain of E. coli found in the bad romaine to the growing region of Yuma, Ariz.
But the last romaine lettuce was harvested there April 16 and the shelf life for lettuce is about three weeks. According to the CDC, the onset of the last reported illness was May 2.
Federal investigators are still trying to find the source.
Dr. Stephen Ostroff, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, said researchers were looking for patterns — in water supply, harvesting equipment, even shared work crews.
In 2006, after the danger from a toxic strain of E. coli tied to spinach that sickened 205 people across 26 states had passed, researchers continued hunting for another seven months. They traced the bacteria to river water carrying cattle and wild-pig feces from a ranch scarcely a mile from a spinach field.
During the latest outbreak, researchers for the FDA and the CDC warned consumers, including institutional purchasers like schools and restaurants, not to buy romaine unless they were certain that it did not come from Yuma — a near impossibility, because individual bags of lettuce are hardly ever readily sourced and tracked.
Critics noted that food safety monitoring laws, authorized by Congress in 2010, have still to be fully put in place, hampering the efforts of researchers to find and recall fresh produce.
Where is the painted chipmunk?
It’s on a metal column outside the main entrance of the Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center in downtown Little Rock.
More information is at centralarkansasnaturecenter.com.