Posted: February 18th, 2009 - 3:42pm by Ben Chapman

SunHerald.com is reporting an outbreak of Salmonella at a maximum security prison in Jackson County, Mississippi:

The state Health Department is currently trying to determine what food could’ve caused a salmonella outbreak at the maximum-security jail this week.
The outbreak sent five inmates to the hospital, though only one remains hospitalized, officials said.
Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd said the inmates started getting sick, suffering mostly from diarrhea and abdominal cramps, on Monday, with two the inmates experiencing a low-grade fever. The sheriff said the jail gets its food from an international food services company.

He said the ingestion of peanuts or peanut butter has been ruled out as the possible cause of the illness. He said, so far, officials believe the potentially life-threatening bacterial infection could’ve been caused by some lettuce that the food services company provided and the inmates ingested.
The Sun Herald updates this story in Thursday’s edition.

Lettuce and leafy greens have most often been associated with pathogenic E. coli in outbreaks, but food handlers have been known to shed Salmonella without showing symptoms.