Latest spinach warning... suspected e coli contamination

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/f...1&cset=true

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LOL

Thought I'd move the topic here.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews....xml&src=rss

Actually, I mostly eat frozen spinach, so I guess I'm ok. Even when I do eat the prebagged stuff, I always wash it first. (Sure, they say it's been "triple washed," but I'm not about to believe any food manufacturer. DH says I'm paranoid. I say it's careful.)

Frankly, I have no desire to eat ka-ka. And isn't that where we get E.coli?

Most sources are saying that washing doesn't get rid of e coli. Unless you wash it in bleach. Thorough cooking is the only way to destroy the bacteria.

Really? Well, good thing I don't like raw spinach. I usually cook it. I like it sauteed with a little garlic. However, I do sometimes just "wilt" it into soups. I suppose that's not considered "thoroughly" cooking it...

Apparently it's just the bagged fresh spinach that's a concern now. Frozen spinach seems to be ok.

Yuck! I had some in a salad last week, but thankfully I'm ok. I'm throwing the bag I have in the fridge away!

I always KNEW that spinach was dangerous! Yuck!

Trust me -- one thing you do not wanna get is the bad version of E.coli -- O157:H7

NAAAAAAASTY stuff.

They've changed it now, but does anyone notice anything odd about CNN's original spinach headline?

Could you be referring to the disgusting Toss the Salad reference?

Well...if you get that bug "tossing" (vomiting) won't be your concern.

I only bought packed lettuce one in my life time. Since they had that episode about the lettuces awhile back, I don't buy any pack vegs. I rather have frozen vegs. myself.

Hope they can fine out, What the heck is going on. First it was lettuce and now it's spinach. Something is terribly wrong here.

I didn't realize so many people ate spinach.

At least Popeye is safe, he eats canned spinach.

when i do eat that stuff , which i cant remember when it was , but it was a can not a bag, didnt know it came that way,,, yuk

Yeah! Another reason not to eat spincah.

Or spinach even!

Someone told me (and this could just be rumor, don't know) that if the spinach is cooked, then it kills the e-coli. I was just eating cooked spinach the night before the news came out!

Still here.

I like hot spinach salad in which you lightly cook the spinach. That said, I guess I won't be eating spinach for some time. I wonder if spinach dip, made from the frozen spinach will be a staple at office parties this year???

My colon is finished cause I eats me spinach. I'm poopeye the sailor man!!!!!

Ok... I am continuing to eat spinach every day.

That's right folks. I live dangerously.

I don't eat the prebagged kind right now (never ate a lot of it anyway.... maybe once every few months). But I am still enjoying the frozen version. And if my CSA has some today, I'm going to get that, too.

Yay spinach!

ok, now we have a local e.coli death:
Local E. coli death investigated

So have we ever found out if she died from Ecoli? And how about that lettuce? Our next question--should we just boycott fresh produce??

I bought some bagged spinach this morning. They only had 1 brand and it was on sale for $1 a bag. I like salads but I don't like lettuce so I use spinach instead. I guess I'll have to tough it out.

Buy local as much as possible, if you're worried.

It's unlikely the Mennonites are pooping in their strawberry patch.

Also, fewer fingers handling it, less odds of poopy fingers touching it.

I'll stay away from the poop!

Hey when you were growing up weren't you told "don't eat that it is dirty" about stuff that fell on the ground? Tell me then why would you eat anything that has spents months in the dirt?

well they figured out it was a wild boar crapping on the spinach that caused this. i didn't know they had that many wild boars running around cali

They're focusing on the wild boar, but it's more likely it came from cattle (which is a common place to find e. coli).

From Reuters:

Four of the new matching samples have been traced to cattle on the same ranch and the other two new matching samples were traced to a creek and a wild pig killed on the property, Reilly said.

Wild pigs present at the ranch could be spreading the toxic E. coli strain but exactly how it contaminated a spinach field on the ranch remains unknown, Reilly said.

So how does that make sense? Four samples traced to cattle, two traced to the wild pig, yet it's the wild pig that people think is the source.

More examples of trying to pin this on the boar from AP:

Samples taken from a wild pig, as well as from stream water and cattle on the ranch, have tested positive for the same strain of E. coli implicated in the outbreak...

Investigators first recovered the same strain of bacteria earlier this month from three cattle manure specimens collected on the ranch. On Thursday, Reilly said the strain had been isolated from six other samples collected on the ranch, including from cattle...

Wild pigs are one “real clear vehicle” that could explain how E. coli spread from cattle on the ranch to the spinach field less than a mile away...

So we found it in a bunch of cows, but we're going to say it's from a single pig.

Uh huh.