It is now safe to each spinach. Who is eating it? Anyone miss it?

Question

I did!!!

Spinach lovers got the green light Tuesday to start eating the leafy vegetables again--as long as they are not from certain California fields.

In statements Monday and Tuesday, the FDA said it had traced spinach tainted with E. coli bacteria to three California counties, and consumers could be confident that spinach grown elsewhere is safe.



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In the last few days, bags of fresh spinach have started popping up on the same grocery store shelves that weeks ago had been stripped of every trace of the stuff.

"My customers will be thrilled," said Hema Potla, owner of Hema's Kitchen, an Indian restaurant in Lincoln Park. "They keep ordering spinach even though it's not on the menu. They are spinach-loving people."

She ordered a new batch of spinach Tuesday from her grocer, Fresh Farms, which already began selling spinach last Friday. Customers there weren't hesitant to give spinach a second cha

Answer 1

I miss it so much

Answer 2

I miss it so much! I'm craving it like crazy!

Where is this article from?
We still have no spinach in restaurants or in stores here in So California!

Answer 3

Not all the spinish is contaminated. They have it narrowed to a few famrs, but the batch number list is do large that they haven;t releeased it yet. Spinash is available in farmers markets still

Answer 4

No! its not safe. Better safe then sorry. I really miss it. I crave it more now every day . Im pregnant. I dont trust it for me or for you. Lets hold out a min. longer...

Answer 5

I craved spinach and artichoke dip everyday!!

Answer 6

I have not heard that it is safe yet, so I would assume that means it's not. And I miss it alot!!

Answer 7

Supermarkets across the country pulled spinach from shelves and consumers tossed out the leafy green.

Food and Drug Administration officials said that they had received reports of illness in 19 states.

The outbreak was traced to Natural Selection Foods, based in San Juan Bautista, California, and the company has voluntarily recalled products containing spinach.

FDA officials stressed that the bacteria had not been isolated in products sold by Natural Selection Foods but that the link was established by patient accounts of what they had eaten before becoming ill. (Watch CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta explain why this advisory is significant -- 2:07)

An investigation was continuing.

"It is possible that the recall and the information will extend beyond Natural Selection Foods and involve other brands and other companies at other dates," said Dr. David Acheson, the chief medical officer with the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Natural Selection Foods said in a statement that it was cooperating with federal and state health officials to identify the source of the contamination and had stopped shipping all fresh spinach products.

They are sold under the brand names Rave Spinach, Natural Selection Foods, Dole, Earthbound Farm, Trader Joe's, Ready Pac and Green Harvest.

State health officials received the first reports of illness August 25, and the FDA was informed on Wednesday, Acheson said.

The FDA warned people nationwide not to eat spinach. Washing won't get rid of the bacteria, though thorough cooking can kill it.

"We're waiting for the all-clear," said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. The university's medical center was treating a 17-year-old Kentucky girl for E. coli infection. That case had been listed as originating in Tennessee, but federal health officials changed it to Kentucky.

Each year, consumers buy hundreds of millions of pounds of bagged spinach -- triple-washed and packaged in cellophane bags and clamshell boxes.
Better safe than sorry

"We will do whatever is necessary to help protect the health and safety of the public," Earthbound Farm spokeswoman Samantha Cabaluna said in a statement.

The company said consumers could call 800-690-3200 for a refund or replacement coupons for tossed-out spinach products.

Wisconsin accounted for 29 illnesses, about one-third of the cases, including the lone death.

"We are telling everyone to get rid of fresh bagged spinach right now. Don't assume anything is over," Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle said. (Watch how health officials are scrambling -- 1:11)

Other states reporting cases were: California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tennessee had been mistakenly placed on an earlier list.

The bug has sickened at least 94 people across the nation, the CDC said. The agency added that 29 people have been hospitalized, 14 of them with kidney failure.

FDA officials said they issued the nationwide consumer alert without waiting to identify the source of the tainted spinach.

"Early is good," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, adding that the alert may have prevented hundreds more cases.

An industry spokeswoman said public health concerns justified the blanket warning.

"It needed to happen this way," said Kathy Means, a spokeswoman for the Produce Marketing Association. "Public health has to trump economics at this time."

More than half the nation's annual 500 million-pound spinach crop is grown in California's Monterey County, according to the Agriculture Department.

"We're trying to get to the bottom of this and figure out what happened. Everybody is terribly concerned," said Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Even before the latest outbreak, a joint state and federal effort has been under way in the California county to find and eliminate any possible sources of E. coli contamination.

"We need to strive to do even better so even one life is not lost," said Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, FDA's acting commissioner.
Washing won't help

The FDA's top food expert stressed the importance of stopping the bacterium at its source, since rinsing spinach won't eliminate the risk. "If you wash it, it is not going to get rid of it," said Robert Brackett, director of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Nutrition.

E. coli lives in the intestines of cattle and other animals and typically is spread through contamination by fecal material. Brackett said the use of manure as a fertilizer for produce typically consumed raw, such as spinach, is not in keeping with good agricultural practices.

"It is something we don't want to see," he told a food policy conference.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Safeway Inc., SuperValu Inc. and other major grocery chains stopped selling spinach, removing it from shelves and salad bars.

"We pulled everything that we have spinach in," said Dan Brettelle, manager of a Piggly Wiggly store in Columbia, South Carolina.

Consumer activist Barb Kowalcyk said fixing the nation's "fractured network" of food safety agencies could save lives. In 2001, her 2-year-old son, Kevin, died of E. coli, possibly after eating tainted ground beef.

"How can we improve communication between agencies? That needs to happen," the Loveland, Ohio, resident said.

Not all strains of E. coli cause illness: E. coli O157:H7, the strain involved in the current outbreak, was first recognized as a cause of illness in 1982. That strain causes an estimated 73,000 cases of infection, including 61 deaths, each year in the United States, according to the CDC.

When ingested, the bug can cause diarrhea, often with bloody stools. Most healthy adults can recover completely within a week, although some people -- including the very young and old -- can develop a form of kidney failure that often leads to death.

Sources of the bacterium include uncooked produce, raw milk, unpasteurized juice, contaminated water and meat, especially undercooked or raw hamburger.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A California natural foods company was linked Friday to a nationwide E. coli outbreak that has killed one person and sickened nearly 100 others.

Answer 8

im not eating it. if i ever do. then i only eat it in salads. but i wont now cuz im still scared bc of the ecoli thing.

Answer 9

When you see Popeye again in its full splendor, that's when it will be safe

Answer 10

i'm still passing it by
but now i crane my neck
spinach rubbernecking,
i guess