CDC: Throw Out All Romaine Lettuce Unless You are SURE It’s Not From Yuma, Arizona
Beware!
CDC: Throw Out All Romaine Lettuce Unless You are SURE It’s Not From Yuma, Arizona
Beware!
Starting on April 10th, the CDC announced an investigation into outbreaks of a particular strain of E. coli which first appeared in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. On April 14th, a Pennsylvania-based company, Fresh Food Manufacturing Co, issued a recall for about 8,700 pounds of romaine lettuce, a relatively small amount. That amount has since grown.
As of Friday, April 20th, that strain has been confirmed to have sickened 53 people across 16 states, with 31 of those cases requiring hospitalization. Five have been diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome, a variety of kidney failure that can be caused by certain strains of E. coli.
Outbreak Update: 53 people sick in 16 states with E. coli infections linked to chopped romaine lettuce. Don’t eat any store-bought chopped romaine, including salad mixes with romaine, and organic romaine. Throw it away. https://t.co/r8k0N9Mjhf pic.twitter.com/gqG3fIJpRF
— CDC (@CDCgov) April 18, 2018
The CDC has narrowed the origin of the outbreak to Yuma, Arizona and are warning consumers to not consume any type of romaine from the area. However, most lettuce in the United States does not carry location identification any more specific than country of origin, so it’s unlikely that consumers have any way to know where their romaine is from. That’s why the CDC is now urging Americans to throw out any romaine they have purchased unless they can confirm it is not from the Yuma area. Instructions also say to not purchase any romaine until further notice, and to refrain from buying any dish featuring romaine lettuce in a restaurant.
Earlier this year, romaine was the source of a major E. coli scare in Canada.
Usually, the CDC recommends simply washing romaine thoroughly to remove E. coli residue.
Follow us
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
April 20, 2018
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
SubmitNecessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies.