Scallions traced to Ready Pac - they had the Spinach E-Coli Outbreak

[RamboLiberal]

The scallions suspected in the E. coli outbreak linked to Taco Bell came from a Southern California grower, an official with the company that washed, chopped and packed them for the restaurant chain said Thursday.

Ready Pac Produce, the sole supplier of green onions to Taco Bell restaurants in the New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia areas, stopped all production of scallions at its Florence, N.J., plant, which was visited Wednesday by federal food inspectors.

“As soon as we heard news from Taco Bell about the positive yet inconclusive results, we took immediate action to do everything we could,” said Steve Dickstein, marketing vice president for Irwindale-based Ready Pac, one of the nation’s leading produce packers.

<snip>

This is the second E. coli scare to hit Ready Pac in the past four months. In September, spinach with the Ready Pac label was among dozens of brands pulled from the shelves when federal authorities traced a nationwide E. coli outbreak to a San Juan Bautista processing plant that bags its spinach and dozens of other brands. The spinach was traced to California’s Salinas Valley, on the Central Coast.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16089596/

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

1. Ugh...I am not buying Ready Pac anymore.

That company needs to clean up their act. Seriously.

[KamaAina]

2. But how do you know if you're buying Ready Pac?

Any restaurant you go to -- even the Olive Garden :P -- could be buying from Ready Pac. It's not like they're going to go out ofd their way to put a sign in their front window that says "We Proudly Serve Ready Pac Produce: Only Two Known E. coli Outbreaks This Year!" :puke:

[Historic NY]

3. Thats it..........

who is monitoring the hen house, why are growers allowed to spread untreated human waste into their fields. The last time it was blamed on a broken sewer pipe. How many days does it take to figure out the human waste (shit) stinks and is visible when used in farmings. The foul odor should be the clue. This has happened several times before with scallions.

[mike_c]

5. I don't believe this has anything at all to do with untreated human waste....

I believe the last outbreak was attributed to cattle farms near Salinas. There are several things happening here, IMO. One is that agricultural production is becoming denser and the land around fields is losing natural buffers. Another is that practices designed to rush food to market at the lowest cost-- e.g. field washing and packing-- are not designed to completely eliminate bacteria-- it's just that the bacteria that are normally present are innocuous for most folks. But when a contaminant is introduced, it is not eliminated by field packing procedures.

[NickB79]

6. I thought it was wild pigs crapping in the spinach fields

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=oX8&q=spinach+wild+pigs+e.+coli&btnG=Search

Since wild pigs are becoming such a problem in the US, it is likely they got into both spinach and scallion fields if they were close to one another.

[Historic NY]

7. E. coli is normally found in humans..........

I heard about the pigs but I also heard they found a broke sewer pipe. I don't find the pig theory as plausible as the human waste or sewerage problem. For thousands of years farmer have recycled animal waste (manure) into the soil a common way is to spray it onto the surface. We had sod farms locally that used treated human waste. These scallions are grown in the ground and the soil itself is contaminated it would take a tremendous amount of pigs to do so. This is not the first time scallion were the cause. Chili's restaurants had the same problem some years back. The government is letting us down by lack of inspection of food, food processing and packaging. It just seems strange to blame wild animals vs human intervention in the food chain.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/e-coli/ID00044
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/contaminants/ecoli.html

<snip>

Sources of Microbial Contamination.

Examples of how human and animal waste may contaminate a water supply include, but are not limited to, the following:

Failure of an on-site sewage disposal system (e.g., septic system) that causes direct infiltration to groundwater and/or provides runoff to surface water;

Discharge of untreated or improperly treated sewage to rivers and reservoirs, such as during operational malfunctioning or during heavy storms with excessive storm water runoff; Over application of sewage plant sludge on agricultural fields (known as land application), causing contaminated water to run off to surface water and/or infiltrate to groundwater; Runoff of animal wastes to surface water from pastures and rangelands; and Infiltration to groundwater from high concentrations of animal waste from confined animal feedlots.

http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Ge-Hy/Human-Health-and-Water.html

[mike_c]

8. E. coli is in ALL mammalian intestines, including everyone reading this....

The issue is that some strains-- and only some strains-- cause disease. E. coli is a widespread mammalian gut symbiont. Many strains are well adapted to mutualism with their hosts and are nonvirulent. Others are less benign, and some cause life threatening disease.

[RamboLiberal]

9. Small correction - wasn't Chilis but Chi Chi's which had the

green onion problem. I remember it well because it was in Beaver County, PA which is next to my home county in PA. Chi Chi's shutdown shortly after. That time it was hepatitis contamination and it killed 3 or 4 people, infected many more and had thousands lining up for shots.

[Sapere aude]

4. Since the government will not inspect these growers they should get the hell sued out of them!