Freshway Foods E. Coli Lettuce Recall?

Freshway Foods today said it was voluntarily recalling products containing romaine lettuce sold chiefly in the eastern United States because of potential contamination with E.coli bacteria.

Food and Drug Administration investigators are looking at a farm in Yuma, Arizona, as a possible source of a widespread E. coli outbreak in romaine lettuce.

The romaine lettuce, sold under the brands Freshway Foods and Imperial Sysco, is being recalled across 23 states and the District of Columbia.

Is it safe to boil the lettuce before eating it?

The Food and Drug Administration and Freshway Foods just announced a 23-state recall of bags of shredded Romaine lettuce sold to wholesalers, food service outlets, and some in-store salad bars and delis due to contamination with the nasty bacteria E. coli 0145.

If you have Romaine lettuce at home don't eat it.

This isn't the first times greens have made North Americans ill, spinach and various types of lettuce have also been recalled due to salmonella and E.coli bacteria contamination throughout Canada and the US repeatedly over the past five years. People have even died, bagged lettuce maybe convenient but its proving to not be healthy with multiple foodborne illness outbreaks.

Devon Beer, vice president of Freshway Foods, says his company worked with the FDA to trace the contaminated lettuce to a Yuma grower. He would not say which one.

Based on Freshway's recall of Romaine lettuce, potentially contaminated lettuce was distributed to foodservice outlets, including restaurants and delis, in some two dozen states east of the Mississippi River. The potential for a more sweeping outbreak was great because the produce industry is rife with food safety gaps.

The recall pertains to products, sold under the Freshway brand and Imperial Sysco brand, with a "use by" date of May 12 or earlier.

E. coli O145 causes a diarrheal illness often with bloody stools. Although most healthy adults can recover completely within a week, some people can develop a form of kidney failure called Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS), which is most likely to occur in young children and the elderly, the company said.