Romaine Lettuce Outbreaks Declared Over

The U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lifted its consumer advisory to avoid romaine lettuce from the Salinas growing region, which was in place due to recent E.coli outbreaks associated with romaine lettuce.

The FDA and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been tracking three romaine-linked outbreaks, all of which are now declared over.

FDA’s traceback investigation identified a common Salinas-based grower between each of these outbreaks. However, romaine from this grower does not explain all of the illnesses seen in these outbreaks.

Federal and state public health investigators visited several of these fields and took a variety of water, soil and compost samples. So far, the results of these samples have come back negative for all three outbreak strains of E. coli O157:H7.

The FDA will conduct an additional, in-depth, root-cause investigation to determine how the contamination might have occurred and to inform what preventive controls are needed to prevent future outbreaks.

Click here for the FDA update

Click here for the CDC update

Source: Western Farm Press