Concerns of another E.coli romaine lettuce contamination at Thanksgiving never materialized and the investigation has concluded.
On November 6, Tanimura and Antle voluntarily recalled romaine lettuce because of a random sample in a grocery store that came back as positive with a strain of E.coli. An investigation was launched by the Center for Disease Control and they tracked some cases back to September of last year. After the voluntary recall, no other infections were reported and as of December 18, that investigation is now closed.
All in all, the CDC found little in this case. The investigation sited 18 cases from nine states with this specific E.coli strain. Six of those people were hospitalized and they all recovered from their illness. The CDC said laboratory testing identified the outbreak strain in a sample of Tanimura & Antle romaine lettuce in a single-head package, but investigators were not able to determine if people got sick from eating the contaminated product.
The release indicated that there were three separate outbreaks of the strain going at the same time and they could not pinpoint the source. Several people who became sick indicated it happened before the ‘packed-on’ dates related to the Tanimura and Antle voluntarily recalled product. CDC officials noted that “This outbreak ended before enough information was available for investigators to identify the likely source.”
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