Americans should not eat romaine lettuce, retailers shouldn’t sell it and restaurants shouldn’t serve any until federal officials get a handle on a serious outbreak of E. coli in the greens, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.
Thirty-two people in nearly a dozen states have gotten sick, with 13 landing in the hospital, the agency said.
One person experienced a form of kidney failure, though no deaths have been reported.
The CDC said the warning applies to romaine lettuce across the board, from whole heads to hearts of romaine and bags and boxes of precut lettuce. It also applies to pre-made salads, like Caesar, that may contain romaine.
The agency said the warning is so broad because “no common grower, supplier, distributor, or brand of romaine lettuce has been identified.”
It said consumers who don’t know whether a certain kind of lettuce is romaine should just throw it out, and clean and sanitize parts of the refrigerator it touched. Washing lettuce will not make it safe to consume if it has been contaminated with E. coli.
Sarah Sorscher, deputy director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, explained to the Associated Press that it can be very difficult to trace contaminated lettuce because so much of what is purchased has been repackaged by middlemen, thus outbreak-related recalls often affect the entire industry, regardless of whose products were at fault.
The CDC said reports of sickness occurred between Oct. 8 and Oct. 31. There’s also been 18 cases in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario.
E. coli typically causes brief diarrhea or other symptoms that are harmless to otherwise-healthy people in rich countries like the U.S. and Canada.
However, the strain identified in this outbreak — O157: H7 — can cause severe abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting, according to the Mayo Clinic. It’s also tied to hemolytic uremic syndrome, the kidney problem the CDC identified in one case.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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