Dodge E. Coli: Throw Away Your Spinach

Sept. 15, 2006 — -- It doesn't matter what brand of spinach. It doesn't matter how long it's been sitting in the refrigerator. If it comes in bag, the Food and Drug Administration is strongly encouraging consumers, from coast to coast, to throw it out.

Federal officials blame the bagged, grocery store spinach for what has now turned into a massive E.Coli outbreak, responsible for hospitalizing residents in at least 19 states. (So far, according the U.S. Centers for Disease Control: California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming). One person has died, a 77-year old woman in Wisconsin. Dozens of people have fallen seriously ill. There have been at least 14 cases of kidney failure.

Natural Selection Foods, which produces packaged products under the label "Earthbound Farm Organic" has announced a voluntary recall for spinach products with sell by dates August 17 through October 21. Earthbound Farm is the nation's grower of organic produce. It is in 74 percent of grocery stores nationwide and last reported to have $450 million in revenue.

Dr. David Acheson, with the Center for Food and Safety and Applied Nutrition says, "the cases are increasing by the day."

"We may be at the peak and we may not. I don't know," he says. "It is all preliminary data."

The FDA has identified the strain of E. coli as O151:H7, and a typical infection takes a few days to develop and nearly two weeks to pass. It causes severe abdominal cramping and bloody diarrhea. In some cases, it can be fatal.

Dr. Michael Donnenberg heads the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Maryland, and says he wouldn't eat any packaged spinach of any kind, and wouldn't advise anyone else to do so either.

"This is an unusual thing," he says. "By now, investigators would normally be able to tell us what lot the spinach came from or what the packaging looked like. At this point, they've usually been able to take cultures of samples that were still sitting somewhere in the victim's home."