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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> FDA officials investigated the outbreak with colleagues at the California Food Emergency Response Team (CalFERT), the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Centers or Disease Control and Prevention. They say that even though they could not pinpoint the exact source of the bacterium in the tainted spinach, their detective work remains valuable.
"The probe was a notable effort by federal, state and local officials," Robert E. Brackett, director of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in a prepared statement. "It yielded valuable information we can use to determine how best to reduce the likelihood of similar outbreaks."
Investigators initially focused their efforts on Natural Selection Foods' processing and packaging plant in San Juan Bautista, Calif., where the contaminated spinach had been processed, the FDA said.
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"The next focus of the inquiry was the source of the spinach in 13 bags containing E. coli O157:H7 isolates that had been collected nationwide from sick customers," the agency said. "Using the product codes on the bags, and employing DNA fingerprinting on the bacteria from the bags, the investigators were able to match environmental samples of E. coli O157:H7 from one field to the strain that had caused the outbreak."
Other food-born illness scares have occurred since. Also in September, salmonella-tainted tomatoes caused serious illness in 183 people in 21 states and Canada. And in December, federal health officials traced another E. coli outbreak to iceberg lettuce used in Taco Bell restaurants across the Northeast. That outbreak sickened more than 70 people in five states.
Finally, consumers in February faced a nationwide recall of Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter implicated in more than 370 cases of salmonella poisoning across 42 states.
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