The last outbreak of E. Coli is finished; According to consumer reports, it is safe to eat romaine lettuce



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One of the deadliest E. coli outbreaks is over, the government announced Thursday, and Consumer Reports says it's safe now to eat romaine lettuce again.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), consumers should not find contaminated romaine lettuce in stores or restaurants. According to James E. Rogers, Ph.D., director of Food Safety Consumer Reports,

hatching, the second related to romaine lettuce, tells us that there is no risk of illness when consuming romaine lettuce. since the end of last year, surfaced in April and killed five people and nauseated 210 in 36 states. It is native to the Yuma region of Arizona where most of the winter and early spring Roman is grown. Production then moves to California

Officials also revealed Thursday that they had found E. coli in the water in a canal near the Roman fields in Yuma, a key clue to determining the cause of the contamination.

The director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Scott Gottlieb, said in a statement that "environmental samples of water from the canal in the area contained E. bacteria. coli O157: H7 corresponding to the bacterial strain responsible for the epidemic ". Prior to Thursday, most officials said the source of the contamination was to name a Yuma farmer, Harrison Farms, as the birthplace of eight Romans who had eight prisoners in Alaska

. will continue to analyze samples of soil, manure and contaminated water that they have taken.

"This is only one clue to help us determine how this outbreak has occurred," said FDA spokesman Peter Cassell. "We still do not know how E. coli got into the water, or how that water got into the fields."

Bill Marler, a Seattle-based attorney specializing in food poisoning cases, says that it seems pretty clear that the channels were carrying water from irrigation to drinking water. fields of the Roman. Canals are often used for this purpose in the arid region of Yuma.

The next difficult step for health officials is to determine how water has been contaminated, says Marler. E. coli spreads through animal and sometimes human waste. For example, a possible source of the 2006 outbreak of E. Coli sourced from contaminated spinach was the presence of wild boars defecating near the California spinach fields. "It seems likely that the canals have been contaminated by some sort of upstream breeding," says Marler.

Cassell says the FDA will continue to inform the public about its findings in the coming weeks.

It is important that federal investigators continue to search for the source of this deadly epidemic, says Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union, Consumer Reports' advocacy division. "And the FDA must take steps to ensure that contaminated water does not enter our products," she says. "Consumers need to know that the food they buy is safe to eat."

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