Here’s What’s Wrong With Romaine Lettuce
Some romaine lettuce can be eaten again. The FDA and CDC announced on November 28 that they had narrowed the recent E. coli outbreak to lettuce grown in fields (not greenhouses) in California. This means that lettuce from Florida or most local farms is probably safe to eat. But Roman’s troubles were not over.
What’s so special about romaine lettuce?
Earlier this year, there was another outbreak of E. coli in romaine lettuce, and there have been others in the past. There will probably be more of them in the future.
Vegetables, including lettuce, are a major source of foodborne illness . There are several factors working against the romance:
- Salad is not (usually) prepared before meals. Cooking kills bacteria, so raw vegetables are more dangerous.
- Romaine and other greens are difficult to wash effectively . You spread bacteria as well as remove them.
- Lettuce needs a lot of water to grow (each piece of lettuce contains very few nutrients and a lot of water). Pathogens can enter contaminated water.
- Roman is really popular. Cabbage probably has outbreaks too, but more and more people are eating romaine. It simply means that the outbreaks are larger and more noticeable.
Packaged salad greens have an additional problem: they are washable, often mixed with greens from other households. Personally, I’m serious about bagged salad greens , even if I’m lazy and sometimes use them.
Is there an answer to buying local?
Small local farms are great in many ways, but they don’t provide insurance against foodborne illness. The reason you never hear about huge outbreaks coming from small farms is simply because they are small . If several people get sick, it may not be enough to track which food they got sick from. (Remember that most food poisoning reports come from people who were so sick that they needed medical attention. For each reported case, there are probably many more cases that go unnoticed.)
At this point, we know there is a California salad related outbreak, so if you buy something from a Tennessee farm, you at least know it is not related to the California outbreak. But is it generally safer? Probably no.
Can we blame the politics for this?
Kind of, but maybe not as you think.
Rumor has it that the FDA under President Trump has stopped requiring farms to test water for pathogens. The truth is that the water test rule was proposed in 2011 and is being delayed. It was supposed to take effect this year, but has been pushed back to 2022, according to Wired .
So, water testing would be nice, but pathogenic bacteria can sometimes show up, never register on tests, and still be present often enough to make people sick. Testing alone will not stop lettuce-borne disease outbreaks.
Sarah Taber, a food strategist and scientist, noted on Twitter that many lettuce producers are already doing this testing. But she says there are likely problems at several levels that increase the likelihood of lettuce outbreaks.
She notes that food safety requires well trained staff, good procedures and a strong sick leave policy. “Neither is incompatible with a workforce that is scared, broke, has no access to health care, is unable to trade in the workplace, and receives desperate wages from the threat of being reported to ICE.”
An end to repressive immigration measures would likely make our food safer for everyone; so will other policies and practices that benefit agricultural workers.
How do we know where our lettuce leaves come from?
It’s not always well-labeled enough to be tracked, but that’s about to change. When this outbreak was first announced, the warning was that all novels were suspect. Florida romaine makers had to wipe out thousands of pounds of perfectly good salad .
Fortunately, the FDA is starting to require romaine to be marked with the place where it was grown. By now, they figured out that the salad that made people sick came from certain parts of California. (Here is a list of counties to avoid .) Lettuce is grown at different times in different parts of the United States; When the outbreak hit in the spring of 2018, Yuma, Arizona was supplying most of the lettuce to the country. We hope better tracking will help you track outbreaks faster.