Is it safe to eat spinach?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Friday answered that question with a qualified yes, lifting a warning against eating fresh bagged spinach from California's Central Coast -- except for certain products already recalled because of a nationwide \o7E. coli\f7 outbreak.
But officials didn't exactly declare spinach risk-free.
"Based on where we are at this point of the investigation," said David Acheson, chief medical officer for the FDA's food safety division, "it is as safe as it was before this event."
The move followed a two- week scare in which one person died and 186 others fell ill from eating spinach contaminated by a virulent form of \o7E. coli\f7 -- the largest such outbreak ever recorded involving the Salinas Valley area. The greens were traced to Natural Selection, a large grower and processor based in San Juan Bautista.
Not long after clusters of cases were identified in multiple states, federal officials on Sept. 14 called upon consumers to avoid all fresh spinach, later narrowing the warning to spinach from three counties on California's Central Coast, the heart of the nation's spinach industry.
On Friday, officials honed that warning further, limiting it to more than 40 brands with "best if used by" dates of Aug. 17 through Oct. 1.
But in a news teleconference Friday, Acheson sounded anything but enthusiastic about lifting the advisory. He took note of the 20 \o7E. coli \f7outbreaks from lettuce and spinach since 1995, nine involving the Salinas Valley.
"Until some fundamental fixes are put in place in the areas where this contamination is happening," he said, "there is obviously a concern that two months from now we'll be having the same conversation, talking about outbreak number 21."
California health officials offered about as enthusiastic a thumbs up.
"This could happen again, because we systemically have, we suspect, chronic sources of contamination in the Salinas Valley," said Kevin Reilly, deputy director for prevention services at the state Department of Health Services.
Possible sources include contaminated water, manure from nearby cattle farms, other animal droppings and poor worker hygiene.
