Friday, September 15, 2006

Health Crisis Of The Day


Current mood: jaded

Category: News and Politics



From Yahoo! News:

E. coli outbreak brings spinach warning
By ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press Writer Thu Sep 14, 7:38 PM ET


An outbreak of E. coli in eight states has left at least one person dead (my italics) and 50 others sick, federal health officials said Thursday in warning consumers not to eat bagged fresh spinach.

The outbreak of the sometimes deadly bug killed one person in Wisconsin, said Dr. David Acheson, of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. The outbreak has sickened people — eight of them seriously — in Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah as well.

FDA officials do not know the source of the outbreak, other than it appears to be linked to bagged spinach. "We're advising people not to eat it," Acheson said.

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Let's hope this doesn't develop into a national emergency, like West Nile Virus, Bird Flu and Legionnaire's Disease.

Diarrhea is no picnic - but there's no need to panic.

We can avoid eating spinach, sprouts, lettuce, celery, cabbage and other fresh vegetables and stick to safe foods like Oreos, Twinkies and pork rinds. Nobody ever got an E. coli infection from them.