Warning for ALL US residents - fresh bagged spinach!
Hey Gals and Guys
Tv is warning today about a national outbreak of E-coli
poisoning in the US - eight states, maybe more, affected at least.
In the last 2 days there has been at least one death and many hospitalizations with people deathly sick from Spinach and
Baby Spinach that's supposed to be clean, etc. No brand given. Guesses are that it was grown in soil containing human fecal matter. Yuck!!!!!!!!!!!!
Recommendations are to throw it out if purchased in the
last 5 days
.
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May you always have..Love to Share, Health to Spare, and Friends that Care!
No vendors have been listed yet, but my suspicion
is Dole. They have a hammer lock on the prepared
salads in a bag, as well a bulk greens. Most of their
products come in from Chile.
They just had an 'incident' in the last couple of months
with pre-packaged green salads. In that incident, the
water used to wash the crop from the field was contaminated
with E-coli.
Not making accusations here, just adding two and two.
Well, Now we're supposed to be able to eat all fresh Spinach
as long as it's NOT grown in Cal.
I wonder if our groceries will now put up signs, telling us
where their fresh Spinach is grown or comes from
On my trip to the grocery over the weekend, the salad bar,
which usually has 2 open selections, one of baby spinach,
and one of mixed greens containing some baby spinach,
looked like no one had been buying them - old and sad lookin'
head lettuce and Romaine.
Evidently others miss their Spinach too! :wink:
__________________
May you always have..Love to Share, Health to Spare, and Friends that Care!
Here's something from the Sep 25 issue of Jon Barron's newsletter:
Quote:
Spinach, a Little Perspective
In what "appears" to be one of the biggest news stories of the year, bagged spinach has been withdrawn from supermarket shelves across America after an E. coli outbreak that has killed one person and caused illness in over 150 others. Most restaurants have pulled all spinach from their menus claiming their customers will no longer touch it. The spinach, grown and distributed by a California company, could have been contaminated in the field or during processing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some groups, such as the Hudson Institute, are using this incident as an opportunity to discredit organic farming. So is natural, raw, bagged spinach worth all the fuss?
Well certainly you want to pull contaminated food from the shelves, but really. Considering how much press the spinach incident has received, you might be surprised to learn that, according to the CDC ( https://www.cdc.gov/NCIDOD/DBMD/disea...chiacoli_g.htm ), E. coli causes an estimated 73,000 cases of infection, including 61 deaths, each year in the United States. Isn't that fascinating? Considering how much uproar we're hearing over 150 infections and 1 death, why have we heard almost nothing about the other 73,000 infections and 61 deaths? Could it be because the primary source of infection, again according to the CDC, is "associated with eating undercooked, contaminated ground beef?" And we all know what happens ( https://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,2329,00.html ) when you say anything negative about the beef industry!
You think I'm being paranoid when I suggest that the health food industry gets singled out for unusual treatment as opposed to mainstream industries? Consider that as a result of just 10 people being infected with E. coli by contaminated Odwalla juice back in 1986, the sale of non-pasteurized juices was pretty much eliminated from the market…for all brands, for good. And yet, 60 some people die every year from eating contaminated meat and you hardly ever hear about it. Very interesting!
So what can we expect?
Look for another run at suggesting that all produce be irradiated to kill contaminating bacteria, and coincidentally, to prolong shelf life. Resist it. Life has risks, and your odds of dying from E. coli are far less than your chances of being hit by lightning. Your body thrives on raw fresh foods. It dies on a sustained diet of cooked and processed food. And as for irradiated food, you don't want to go there.
Oh, and one other thing to consider. The vast majority of people who eat contaminated spinach show no symptoms at all, or very mild symptoms at most. Why is that? It would seem to be an important question -- possibly the most important question, yes?
Quite simply, those with healthy populations of beneficial bacteria in their intestinal tracts are virtually immune to E. coli problems. With beneficial bacteria lining every square inch of your intestinal tract, there is simply no room for ingested E. coli to take root, colonize, and multiply -- not to mention the fact that the beneficial bacteria gobble up any stray E. coli they encounter. In other words, the outbreak has less to do with contaminated food than it does with the epidemic of compromised immune systems and intestinal tracts. Rather than fret about the remote possibility of eating contaminated spinach, you'd be far better off simply supplementing with a good probiotic and a nice complement of natural immune boosters, and pathogen destroyers.
Seems like we're in a lot more danger from meat than from spinach, as far as E. coli is concerned.
bifrost99,
In relation to the article about banning manure for fertilizer, farmers have been using it for many years before you or I were ever born, so I think someone is playing hanky panky with the the food market again. We can expect prices to go up on produce because it costs more to buy those chemicals. At the same time, they can get rid of a few more of us with toxins, since medicine evidently isn't doing the job fast enough.
It was interesting to read that they are concerned about run-off of the E-coli ladened manure....if I read that right. Do they think the chemical fertilizer run-off will be better?
I had an e-mail from a friend about this yesterday and I considered posting it here but it stressed the problem of unhealthy and unclean illegal aliens too much. One thing that did ring a bell was the lack of port-a-pottys in the thousands and thousands of acres of produce in the fields. There weren't very many as I remember when I last drove through California. Where do you suppose the laborers relieve themselves? Do they have a sink with running water to wash their hands? I could be wrong on this, but I really don't remember seeing very many restroom facilities.
The spinach was supposed to be thrown away because people might contaminate their kitchen before they could get the spinach cooked. E. coli is supposed to have come up from the ground through the roots to be inside the leaves.
I wonder if manure was a problem only in recent times. Animals packed together in feedlots and caged chickens have to be fed low doses of antibiotics. This has caused much selection for bacteria resistant to antibiotics.
The Air Force is warning personnel to avoid barnyard dust to avoid getting Q fever. I posted elsewhere a link to research showing that people who work with livestock have much higher rates of chronic diseases from the respiratory pathogen c. pneumoniae. Living on a farm getting fresh food and lots of fresh air should have been a healthy lifestyle.
You had some really good points, morning. It does make sense that the antibiotics given to livestock might possibly kill most of the friendly bacteria and cause the E-coli to get stronger and more plentiful. Then in the crowded feedlots they're standing in manure all day, most likely.
I hadn't thought about the spinach contaminating kitchens.
The spinach was supposed to be thrown away because people might contaminate their kitchen before they could get the spinach cooked. E. coli is supposed to have come up from the ground through the roots to be inside the leaves.
I wonder if manure was a problem only in recent times. Animals packed together in feedlots and caged chickens have to be fed low doses of antibiotics. This has caused much selection for bacteria resistant to antibiotics.
The Air Force is warning personnel to avoid barnyard dust to avoid getting Q fever. I posted elsewhere a link to research showing that people who work with livestock have much higher rates of chronic diseases from the respiratory pathogen c. pneumoniae. Living on a farm getting fresh food and lots of fresh air should have been a healthy lifestyle.
Don't forget that in these areas one can't waste clean water on irrigation - so they use the next grade down - which is sewage water - filtered a bit - but not clean!!
Janner
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( That's DOUBLE YUCK!!) Filtered sewer water on our food??!! We might as well move to Asia where in many areas they use human waste for fertilizer. When I went to the Philippines in the mid-60's with my husband the military told us not to eat locally grown produce for that reason. The commissary had wonderful fresh produce from Bagio, in the mountains, where they used chemical or natural fertilizer. We had to haul 5 gallon jugs of drinking water from the base to our home too.
Warning for ALL US residents - fresh bagged spinach!
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