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CDC: Do Not Eat Any Romaine Lettuce Until Further Notice (wired.com) 194

Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out an unusually strong statement telling Americans to toss any romaine lettuce in any form: whole, chopped, pre-bagged into Caesar salads, combined into spring mix, and so on. The warning covered not just homes but retailers and restaurants, and came with a recommendation to empty any fridge where romaine has been stored, and wash it out with soap and warm water. From a report: The CDC said it was making the recommendation to not eat, serve or sell any romaine lettuce because 32 people in 11 states, plus 18 people in Ontario and Quebec, have been made ill by E. coli O157:H7, which causes very serious illness because it produces a toxin that destroys cells lining the intestines and kidneys. The patients are all infected with the same strain, based on genetic fingerprinting, and the only thing they have in common is that they all ate romaine.

But, the CDC said, "no common grower, supplier, distributor, or brand of romaine lettuce has been identified." The agency isn't usually so sweeping in its statements, but with a holiday coming -- one that's centered around eating and that takes people offline into the real world of airports and cars and dinner tables -- it warned against all romaine until the threat can be better defined. The Food and Drug Administration, which does have the power to compel foods to be recalled, is investigating, along with health departments in the 11 states where people have gotten sick.

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CDC: Do Not Eat Any Romaine Lettuce Until Further Notice

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 22, 2018 @12:03PM (#57684538)

    I read no other news, so I messed this when it came out two days ago. So I ate romaine lettuce and now I am shitting my pants.

    • I read no other news, so I messed this when it came out two days ago. So I ate romaine lettuce and now I am shitting my pants.

      If you're depending on slashdot for up-to-the minute news of any kind, you're doing it wrong.

      On the other hand, if you want periodic reminders of news stories in the form of dupes, then you've come to the right place. :-p

    • by arth1 ( 260657 )

      You must be new here. No, not for that reason, but because I don't think many of the greybeards here would ever eat romaine lettuce in the first place.

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        We still enjoy research, like this interesting little tit bit, "E. coli comes from the guts of animals, and on the other side of the canal, thereâ(TM)s a cattle feedlot that holds up to 100,000 cows at a time." and "When the lettuce season started this year, they imposed wider buffer zones between farms and industrial-scale farms, increasing them from 400 feet, a little longer than a football field, to 1,200 feet." so can you see the problem in thinking. No matter how far apart they are, if there is a

    • by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Thursday November 22, 2018 @04:34PM (#57685610)

      So I ate romaine lettuce and now I am shitting my pants.

      You shouldn't have eaten your pants, then.

  • The CDC said it was making the recommendation to not eat, serve or sell any romaine lettuce because 32 people in 11 states, plus 18 people in Ontario and Quebec, have been made ill by E. coli O157:H7, which causes very serious illness because it produces a toxin that destroys cells lining the intestines and kidneys.

    Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?

    • by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Thursday November 22, 2018 @12:12PM (#57684582)

      Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?

      If you have limited means of growing produce, you wouldn't want to waste it on crunchy water.

      • by nadaou ( 535365 ) on Thursday November 22, 2018 @12:40PM (#57684690) Homepage

        It's not crunchy water to blame, it is migrant farm workers not being given bathroom breaks and so taking shits in the fields instead. "transmission occurs through fecal contamination of food and water supplies" --Wikipedia

        • Crunchy water refers to the low nutritional value of lettuce, meaning that only developed countries would take the trouble to grow this product.

          • Water in Vegetables [livestrong.com]

            Quote:

            "A variety of vegetables have a water composition above 90 percent. Cucumbers and iceberg lettuce contain the highest amount because they're 96 percent water. Ninety-four percent to 95 percent of celery, tomatoes and zucchini consists of water. You can choose from broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, sweet peppers and spinach for vegetables composed of 91 percent to 93 percent water. Carrots are rated as having 87 percent, while green peas are 79 percent water."
        • "migrant farm workers" likely aren't the major source of contamination. Think bird shit, coyote shit, rabbit shit. There's no water treatment for field water - so the water coming out of the sprinklers is pulled straight out of the ditch/river which may be contaminated by the feedlot upstream. All of which are sources of "fecal contamination".

          • I suspect the most likely source of shit is from the ground, where they use cow manure.

          • "migrant farm workers" likely aren't the major source of contamination.

            Yes, yes they are.

            Think bird shit, coyote shit, rabbit shit.

            Coyotes and rabbits shit on the ground. Bird shit is not a major problem because of its nature. The problem really is not providing enough bathrooms and/or bathroom breaks to migrant workers, who really are shitting between the rows because they have nowhere else to shit and no time to shit anywhere else even if there were somewhere. In fact, there are scarcely any animals besides birds in the fields any more because Big Agribusiness has mandated that their habitats should be destroyed. If

      • Why would you assume that non-lettuce produce is immune to contamination?
    • by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday November 22, 2018 @12:15PM (#57684592)

      Undeveloped countries don't have the infrastructure to monitor these types of things because they are undeveloped.

      Also, developed countries have far more developed food safety standards because they are developed.

      Really, the big clue on this is your own use of the word "developed".

      • Undeveloped countries don't have the infrastructure to monitor these types of things because they are undeveloped.

        ... and when it is measured it is sky high. Childhood diarrhea in poor countries is one of the world's leading causes of death, killing more than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.

        32 sick people wouldn't make the news in Africa or India because it is insignificant compared to the thousands of kids dying everyday [cdc.gov].

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Because high levels of cross contamination only occurs in industrialized farming. You're safe if you grow your own or buy your romaine at an old fashioned farmer's market.

      Shitting for days is the price you pay for cheap, convenient food.

    • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday November 22, 2018 @12:21PM (#57684612)

      Because nobody gives a fuck why someone in Africa croaks.

      People die on this continent by the thousands, daily, from avoidable diseases, from wars that nobody know about because they ain't even worth a ticker message on CNN, from mining the metals we need for our next cellphone that we use for a year, if that, and a million other things.

      And nobody, literally nobody, gives a fuck.

      You are still wondering why these people try to escape that hellhole? I don't.

      • by epine ( 68316 )

        Because nobody gives a fuck why someone in Africa croaks.

        Until you point out it's an incurable, highly contagious hemorrhagic fever with a brief 48-hour incubation period during which it expresses no tell-tale symptoms, whatsoever.

        When your grade three teacher told you about Africa being "over there", her own education was already ten years out of date.

        Just wait until all those Pennsylvanian coal miners find out what "globalization" really means.

        All it takes is one tainted kilo of weed delivered by Swift Bo

        • Weed? From Africa?

          Please.

          Palm oil and cocoa is what they really export to us. Any palm oil not coming from the far east is probably from Nigeria. And palm oil is in pretty much EVERYTHING today. It's the cheap replacement for pretty much any other fats we used to have in our processed foods.

          Enjoy your dinner.

          • That is why in Thailand the least shelf area is reserved for palm oil, they export everything :D
            Honestly, most oil here is peanuts, then comes rice oil and a bit of maize, then obviously in the high price range coconut.

        • No, all it takes is a nurse with political ties to be allowed back in the country for no good reason.

          https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/29... [cnn.com]

    • If you want it done right, you grow and process your food yourself... or at least support your fellow [local] neighbor.

      If you want it done the other way, you support the multinational that will gladly provide an environment that will manage to be both carcinogenic and contagious at the same time. Their rank and file may not be able to afford to eat what they produce... not that they'd actually want to.

      Factory-farming and large-scale food production are the problem.

      Eating should never be centralized; keep it

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Small and organic farmers have significantly higher rates of e.coli contamination that large industrial farms.
        Read Journal of Food Protection, or "Preharvest Evaluation of Coliforms, Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Organic and Conventional Produce Grown" for more information.

        Up to 19 times more e. coli, in fact.

        • Small and organic farmers have significantly higher rates of e.coli contamination that large industrial farms.

          Yes, we should totally run with Big Ag's bullshit projections and false narrastives and freak out about naturally-occurring bacteria growing in the fucking soil like it always has. Fuck off with your projections and false narratives, shill.

    • Because 32 people getting a little sick in a country of 325,000,000 isn't worth batting an eye over in any country with any serious problems to deal with. 1 in 10 million people getting sick? Just drinking the municipal water sickens way more than that in most countries.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        So dead is "a litte sick"?

        • by tsqr ( 808554 )

          So dead is "a litte sick"?

          No, dead is a lot sick. I don't know how many of the 32 US people who were diagnosed with e. coli actually died from the disease; do you? At any rate, I think the post you were replying to was just suggesting a bit of perspective. In a country where 40,000 people per year die in automobile accidents, 32 people getting sick - whether it's a little or a lot - doesn't seem like something that should cause a lot of hand-wringing. The CDC has issued their warning and investigators will eventually get to the ro

          • A car accident is called an accident because: it is a an accident.
            If you want to nitpick, yes: some of them could have been avoided 'somehow'. Nevertheless it is kinda if "karma" or "misfortune" or "destiny" to die in an accident.

            32 infections by a deadly strand of e. coli: most certainly can be avoided. And on the other hand: not dying in a car accident is super simple: don't be there. Not dying to e. coli is not to simple, it can be in any lettuce or vegetable.

            So, we have 32 cases. Agency issues warning.

            • by jabuzz ( 182671 )

              However you are still falling into the zero risk choice fallacy. That is stopping to eating Romaine lettuce has no risk associated with it. Of course you don't just stop eating Romaine lettuce, you replace it with something else which also has a none zero risk associated with it.

              Tragically sometimes the replacement item can have a higher risk. A classic example occured in the UK in 1996 over BSE. Big scare you might get new variant CJD from eating beef, so lets just stop eating beef. Instead they ate more c

            • by tsqr ( 808554 )

              A car accident is called an accident because: it is a an accident. If you want to nitpick, yes: some of them could have been avoided 'somehow'. Nevertheless it is kinda if "karma" or "misfortune" or "destiny" to die in an accident.

              32 infections by a deadly strand of e. coli: most certainly can be avoided. And on the other hand: not dying in a car accident is super simple: don't be there. Not dying to e. coli is not to simple, it can be in any lettuce or vegetable.

              So, we have 32 cases. Agency issues warning. People stop eating the lettuce in question. Nothing happens, no one (or only the 32 die), your conclusion: stupid fear mongers, it was not that dangerous after all!

              You are just like the idiots in germany who every year shout: "why do we have stupid storm warnings? Never ever anything is happening than a roof here or there destroyed!" Nevertheless we have always idiots ignoring the warnings because of fore said mantra. And about 10 die every year. And what do the survivours say: "oh! oh! no one told us it was so serious, it looked like a 'standard' warning like EVERY YEAR!" For Funk Sake: if there IS A WARNING it is SERIOUS!

              Wow, you need to calm down. I didn't say the CDC are "stupid fear mongers" or that e. coli isn't dangerous; I said the numbers are small, people shouldn't panic, and the bad stuff should be avoided. I stand by that. I don't understand why you think this is connected in any sane way to prople who ignore storm warnings because "it won't happen to me" and then whine when it does happen to them.

              As to accidents: if you think it's "misfortune" to join the tens of thousands of people killed in cars every year, b

        • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

          Last year 80K Americans died from the flu.

          • by sjames ( 1099 )

            Yes, they did. It was an exceptionally bad year. But I notice nobody was lining up to be the target in a sneezing contest.

            Since it;'s not a big deal for people to not eat one particular variety of lettuce, it seems like a perfectly reasonable precaution.

        • So dead is "a little sick"?

          They're not dead, they're resting [wikipedia.org].

    • by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Thursday November 22, 2018 @12:50PM (#57684722)

      Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?

      Maybe the local folks in under developed countries have more of an acquired or natural immunity to nasty critters in the water that would make a lot of developed country folks get the backdoor trots?

      This is why some of the critters that Europeans schlepped into the New World wreaked havoc among the natives.

      Jarod Diamond covered diseases as being one of the things that a civilization needs to conquer another in a book titled, "Guns, Germans and Steel" .

      • Jarod Diamond covered diseases as being one of the things that a civilization needs to conquer another in a book titled, "Guns, Germs and Steel" .

        FTFY. But your original was unintentionally funny.

        I cannot recommend Diamond's book ighly enough. It was a long, but very enlightening read for me. For the TL/DR crowd: his thesis is that the rise and dominance of European civilization was primarily a fluke of geography that allowed its inhabitants to cultivate crops and form specializations in society earlier than other parts of the world.

        • I cannot recommend Diamond's book highly enough.

          Doh, irony. I correct someone else's typo, then make one of my own. Sorry.

      • by jittles ( 1613415 ) on Thursday November 22, 2018 @01:37PM (#57684940)

        Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?

        Maybe the local folks in under developed countries have more of an acquired or natural immunity to nasty critters in the water that would make a lot of developed country folks get the backdoor trots?

        Having lived in a third world country where people do not know basic rules of sanitation, I can promise you that this is not the case. They have all kinds of illnesses that they blame on being outside when it rains rather than the really disgusting water they should have filtered and then added a little bleach to. I've spent a lot of time hanging out with the people in their little shanty towns and they're constantly sick.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Because people in undeveloped countries often fall ill to gastro-intestinal diseases and die sooner as a result. Since there's bigger fish to fry in those countries, they put things like "not getting the runs" below "managing to not die from exposure".

      In developed countries issues like "local wildlife ate my baby" don't happen (often) and thus we have time to care about "OMG toilet NAOW" and thus we make sure places that are selling us food don't accidentally sell us food that gives us diarrhoea.

      I'm surpri

    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      Read the other answers. Summary: people in developing countries have more immediate things to worry about.

      Also they don't have the same kind of news media trying to troll them 24/7.

      • Also they don't have the same kind of news media trying to troll them 24/7.
        They actually have. There are not many places in the world (outside of the USA, pun intended) that have no or bad internet connections.

    • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday November 22, 2018 @01:32PM (#57684910) Journal
      Because they [the westerners] eat uncooked salads. Lettuce cant be cooked.

      Spinach is always cooked in India, and we have so many kinds of spinach too. There are uncooked foods in Indian cuisine, the chutneys, raitha, kosumari ... but usually they manage to avoid contamination. Now I have lost all immunity. I avoid uncooked foods in all restaurants there.

    • Because that's where you live. If you lived, for example, in El Salvador, you would hear about this kind of thing in El Salvador, too. Not as often though, because an outbreak in New York will be reported in San Francisco, whereas an outbreak in Colombia might not be reported in El Salvador.
    • by arth1 ( 260657 )

      Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?

      Part of the reason is that developed countries have more press, all competing for the ad-sponsored audience. I.e. you hear about it more.
      Part of it is the distribution mechanism, where produce from one place makes it to hundreds of different markets under different brand names. It's being fought somewhat with the "farm to table" movement, which if nothing else helps restrict outbreaks.
      And part of the reason is that people in developed countries have crappy immune systems, having been overproteced all thei

      • The threshold for an infection turning into a disease is much lower if you don't have a primed immune system.
        Yeah, no comment to your other idioticies ...
        Perhaps you might want to read a little bit of the summary:

        have been made ill by E. coli O157:H7, which causes very serious illness because it produces a toxin that destroys cells lining the intestines and kidneys

        Part of the reason is that developed countries have more press, all competing for the ad-sponsored audience.
        Yeah, and that is why they warn you

        • by arth1 ( 260657 )

          The immune system is not primed against e. coli because e. coli are standard symbionts of the human intestine system. So? Do you grasp this? Regardless how strong your immune system is, you are always prone to get an "e. coli infection" during travels.

          Read what you yourself wrote, and then digest the implication of the last two words. During travels. Natives do not get affected as much as travellers.
          This is precisely because the immune system is primed to deal with the strains of pathogens that it has already encountered.

          So, back to topic, what happens if the 32 patients (or more) lose both their kidneys?

          That is personal outcome, not risk. The two are separate concepts. While the individual consequences is enormous to the afflicted, the risk of it happening in the first place is minuscule. The risk of being hit by a Ford F-150 in Te

          • That is personal outcome, not risk. The two are separate concepts. While the individual consequences is enormous to the afflicted, the risk of it happening in the first place is minuscule. The risk of being hit by a Ford F-150 in Texas is much higher, and what happens then can certainly be tragic too. That doesn't imply that Texas should necessarily ban Ford F-150s.
            That is a silly argument. As people can not plan not to encounter F-150s. However they can prevent eating that lettuce and hence lower or remove

    • Can someone tell me why I only hear this kind of "E. Coli scare" only in developed countries?
      Because those drop lots of pig piss and cow dung on the lettuce fields. And unfortunately the IQ of farmers drop with the money they make (or spent on machines) and drop piss and dung on lettuce a week before harvest.

      We had the same problem a few years ago in Germany (and other parts of Europe), 20 or 50 died. They put the remains of bio gas production, basically fermented and dried dung on lettuce fields that are a

  • I'll make sure to heed this advice for the next few rest of my life.

  • by Aero77 ( 1242364 ) on Thursday November 22, 2018 @12:15PM (#57684594)
    Sad.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      Too true, no more Caesars...

  • This was only in the news several days ago.

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Thursday November 22, 2018 @12:39PM (#57684686)

    ... in Germany a few years back. The so called EHEC scandal. (Can't recall if EHEC is the pathogen out the disease it causes). It wasn't pretty. For weeks the republic was frantically tracking down the source and found it in a farm that had basically used raw sewage to fertilize grown sprouts. A few people died a painful death iirc. Don't know if anybody went to jail. This is sort of a borderline case in which dumb Farmers can actually kill people. I don't know if they changed some growing regulations or something after that.

    Bottom line: don't think the CDC is exaggerating, this could likely be serious.

    • Except the supposed source only explained a small amount of cases:
      https://www.foodwatch.org/de/i... [foodwatch.org]

      • 51 dead is not small in my eyes.
        And it is only 51 because the administrations reacted immediately and the lettuce in question was identified immediately ... not so the chain of "pollution".

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) is just another name for the serotype O157:H7 (can cause bloody diarrhea and HUS - Hemolytic-uremic syndrome, kidney failure basically).

    • ... in Germany a few years back. The so called EHEC scandal.

      Impossible. I have it on good authority - an AC post higher up on this page which has been modded “informative” - that this sort of problem only occurs in the US and not in the Enlightened Union.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      The interesting thing was that it still took weeks to identify the problem, while people were seriously ill or dying. And the irony of the whole thing was that sprouts is something usually bought by people trying to eat healthy.

      On the plus side, food poisoning (the non-lethal regular kind) is very rare in Germany, while apparently quite common in the US.

      • And the irony of the whole thing was that sprouts is something usually bought by people trying to eat healthy.

        It's even more ironic that you can grow sprouts in a jar for a few cents in seeds, and not even have to pick them up from the store and risk contamination, but people keep buying them in wads.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          In the German case, the seeds were contaminated. That is why it took so long to find the root-cause.

  • > [CDC] isn't usually so sweeping in its statements, but with a holiday coming...

    Seriously? If (like me) you were wondering whether that clanger came from the CDC itself or the vapid press (Wired in this case), it's the latter.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    As a small farmer, this is a systemic problem with our industrial food producers, and you will not find a more compelling reason for joining a local Community Supportrd Agriculture (CSA) program. You could be having fresh romaine today, if you have personally verified your farmers and their production methods.

    I offer such a package through a farmshare program; however, I do not sell to the public, because I do not trust our food safety programs at any level. They are literally worthless to me and my custome

    • pfft, plenty of small producers also have sold contaminated product, not just veggies but small egg producers

      so get off your high horse, you might even be part of the problem someday

  • ... .lettuce not deny the seriousness of the issue.
  • Sucks to be a Romaine lettuce grower right now.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Well, that put a quick end to the vegans' gloating over the ground turkey salmonella, now didn't it?

  • I prefer the devil's lettuce, thank you very much.
  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday November 23, 2018 @02:43AM (#57687100)

    Although not always possible, stuff like this is a great reason to buy from local farms when possible, it may cost a bit more but with stuff like the Romaine issue happening every now and again, it's a bit of extra insurance...

    Not sure if buying "Organic" would really mean local though, so that's probably not good enough without knowing where it really came from.

    Those of you living in warm places should look into growing lettuce in your own pots, it works really well and is not fussy to keep alive.

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