A CDC alert warns consumers to avoid all romaine lettuce while the organization investigates another E. coli outbreak that appears linked to the salad favorite.
The Centers for Disease Control on Tuesday announced it is investigating another E. coli outbreak connected to romaine lettuce and warns consumers to avoid the salad favorite.
“CDC is advising that U. S. consumers not eat any romaine lettuce, and retailers and restaurants not serve or sell any, until we learn more about the outbreak,” the alert says.
This outbreak has hit 32 people in the United States, 13 of whom have been hospitalized, in 11 states. In Canada, 15 people in Quebec province and three in Ontario have been sickened, six of whom have been hospitalized. One person in the U. S. and one in Canada have developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), the sometimes fatal kidney failure that can accompany E. coli.
In the United States, California has 10 illnesses. The rest are clustered in the Midwest (11 among Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin) and Northeast (10 in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire).
And, right from the start of this outbreak, the stay-away advisory includes all romaine lettuce “s uch as whole heads of romaine, hearts of romaine, and bags and boxes of pre-cut lettuce and salad mixes that contain romaine, including baby romaine, spring mix, and Caesar salad.”
If you’re not sure if your salad mix includes romaine lettuce, toss it, the CDC says. Then sanitize the part of the refrigerator where the lettuce sat.
Early in last spring’s romaine lettuce E. coli outbreak, the warnings were limited to chopped romaine lettuce from the Yuma, Arizona region. One of the most widespread E. coli outbreaks ever killed five of the 210 people in sickened in 36 states. The CDC said laboratory testing fingered Yuma area canal water as the source of that outbreak.
While this is unrelated to that outbreak, the CDC says, “Ill people in this outbreak were infected with E. coli bacteria with the same DNA fingerprint as the E. coli strain isolated from ill people in a 2017 outbreak linked to leafy greens in the United States and to romaine lettuce in Canada.
