Is Michael Pollan becoming the John Irving of food writing? Irving, the author of The World According to Garp and dozens of other whimsical tomes, is often characterized by excessive wordage – as in, great story, but could have been told with half the words.

Foodie Pollan shows the same characteristics in a longwinded reviewed of a bunch of new books about food politics – because what’s better than preparing and eating food than reading about it and watching others do it on television.

But there’s a nosestretcher alert hidden in all those words. Pollan writes,

“The 1993 deaths of four children in Washington State who had eaten hamburgers from Jack in the Box were traced to meat contaminated with E.coli O157:H7, a mutant strain of the common intestinal bacteria first identified in feedlot cattle in 1982.”

To clarify: E. coli O157:H7 belongs to a 
family of bacteria called verotoxigenic E. coli (VTEC) first recognized by researchers at Health Canada in 1977. VTEC is used interchangeably with Shiga-toxin producing E. coli, or STEC, and appear to have evolved tens of thousands of years ago.

In 1982, E. coli O157:H7 was first identified as a cause of human disease after 47 people in White City, Ore., and Traverse City, Mich., developed severe stomach disorders after eating McDonald's hamburgers.

Twenty years later, more than 200 hundred different serotypes --members of the same bacterial strain but with different proteins on their outer shell -- have been isolated from humans, foods and other sources. About 150 of these have been isolated from humans, and more than 50 have been shown to cause disease in humans.

Carlton Gyles (above, right, exactly as shown), a leading STEC researcher at the University of Guelph, wrote in 2007 review in the Journal of Animal Science:

Shiga toxin-producing E. coli refers to those strains of E. coli that produce at least 1 member of a class of potent cytotoxins called Shiga toxin. The STEC are also called verotoxin-producing E. coli. The names Shiga toxin (Stx), derived from similarity to a cytotoxin produced by Shigella dysenteriae serotype 1 (O’Brien et al., 1982), and verotoxin (VT), based on cytotoxicity for Vero cells (Konowalchuk et al., 1977), are used interchangeably. Those STEC that cause hemorrhagic colitis and hemolytic uremic syndrome are called enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC; Levine et al., 1987; Nataro and Kaper, 1998). Ruminants, especially cattle, constitute a vast reservoir.

The STEC have been characterized by a variety of methods, including serotyping, which is used extensively to categorize strains of E. coli (Blanco et al., 2004a,b; Prager et al., 2005). The serotype of an E. coli isolate is based on the O (Ohne) antigen determined by the polysaccharide portion of cell wall lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and the H (Hauch) antigen due to flagella protein. There are 174 O antigens (numbered 1 to 181, with numbers 31, 47, 67, 72, 93, 94, and 122 deleted) and 53 H antigens in the international serotyping scheme, with E. coli isolates having various combinations of O and H antigens (Scheutz et al., 2004). A high percentage of STEC serotypes are nonmotile (NM) mutants of strains with an H antigen. … Because of the importance of serotype O157:H7 in human disease, it is common to consider STEC serotypes in 2 major categories, O157 and nonO157.

Those non-O157 types are showing up in romaine lettuce. E. coli O145 has sickened some 50 people who consumed lettuce processed by Freshway Foods. However, additional testing revealed another STEC in a bag of Freshway lettuce, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has types as Escherichia coli O143:H34. That E. coli has not, according to the Columbus Dispatch, been linked to any known food-borne illness here or elsewhere, but it could sicken people.
 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its state health partners have confirmed that the strain of E. coli O145 detected by the New York State Public Health Laboratory, Wadsworth Center, in Albany, in an unopened bag of shredded romaine lettuce distributed by Freshway Foods, matches the outbreak strain of E. coli O145.

When Freshway Foods of Sidney, Ohio voluntarily recalled certain romaine lettuce products last week because of the possible connection to the E.coli O145 outbreak, financial chief Devon Beer told The Packer, “It’s really a precautionary step.”

What is it now?

FDA also announced last night that federal and state investigators are attempting to determine the point in the supply chain where the contamination occurred and are investigating a farm in the Yuma, Arizona area from which the romaine lettuce was harvested. Lettuce harvested from other geographic areas does not appear to be associated with this outbreak.

Vaughan Foods of Moore, Oklahoma, a supplier of processed and packaged lettuce for use at the foodservice level, received romaine lettuce harvested from the same farm in Yuma, Arizona; the company is recalling romaine lettuce with “use-by” dates of May 9 and May 10. The recalled romaine lettuce distributed by Vaughan Foods was sold to restaurants and food service facilities and were not available for purchase at retail by consumers.

Just in salad bars and salads bought by consumers at restaurants.

Freshway Foods has recalled romaine lettuce products sold for food service outlets, wholesale, and in-store retail salad bars and delis after links with over 50 sick people in Ohio, Michigan and New York were established. On May 5, 2010, the New York state Public Health Laboratory, Wadsworth Center, in Albany reported finding E. coli O145 in an unopened bag of Freshway Foods shredded romaine lettuce being recalled.

When the recall press release was issued by Freshway Foods around noon today, it said,

The recalled romaine lettuce products were sold to wholesalers and food service outlets in the following states east of the Mississippi river: Alabama, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The recalled romaine products were also sold for distribution to in-store salad bars and delis for Kroger, Giant Eagle, Ingles Markets, and Marsh stores in the states listed.

Amy pointed out, since when in Kansas east of the Mississippi river? Someone else e-mailed me to say the same thing about Missouri. I called Freshway Foods and asked, why are Kansas and Missouri on the list, since they are west of the Mississippi (see, according to their own map, left, the company stops moving product at the river). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration press release about the outbreak repeated the same geographical nosestretcher. Given the states listed, should Dillons supermarket, in Manhattan (Kansas), owned by Kroger, be dumping their salad bar? The dude said, uh, good point, thanks, someone will get back to you.

That person just called, so at least she called back. Unfortunately, she seemed confused (understandable, given the situation, but that’s why everyone in the food system should be prepared for these sorts of things).

The nice lady said, we distribute a few other products into Missouri and Kansas but not romaine lettuce. … Oh, we do send romaine lettuce to a couple of distributors in Kansas City, Missouri.

Sigh.

FDA said today that multiple lines of evidence have implicated shredded romaine lettuce from one processing facility as a source of infections in a multistate outbreak to which this recall may be related.

To date, 19 confirmed cases of E. coli O145 illnesses have been reported from Michigan, Ohio, and New York. These illnesses include 12 individuals who have been hospitalized, and three with a potentially life threatening complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).

The evidence includes preliminary results of product traceback investigations that indicate:
• the shredded romaine lettuce consumed by ill persons in three states originated from one processing facility;
• preliminary results of a case-control study in one state that found a statistically significant association between E. coli O145 infection;
• ingestion of lettuce from the same processing facility; and,
• recovery of E. coli O145 from an unopened package of shredded romaine lettuce from the same processing facility that was obtained from a food service entity associated with the outbreak.

On to the harder questions. Did the contamination occur at the plant (unlikely) or in the field, and where was the stuff grown? It should be easy to figure out where the stuff was grown because, as Freshway proclaims on its website,

We can ensure complete product traceability all the way back to the field. We also exceed the minimum standards with over 30 audits per year conducted on our facilities and growers from firms like Cook and Thurber, Primus, as well as many of our customers’ own quality assurance teams.

Food safety starts on the farm. A table of 34 previous outbreaks involving leafy greens like lettuce and spinach is available at:

http://bites.ksu.edu/sites/default/files/lettuce-outbreaks-table_0.pdf