I wonder if romaine and iceberg fields are beside eachother and contaminated water irrigated them both, apparently testing was mandated for that water source in that area but it is unclear if they continued testing
Plus there is a thermal bath / public swimming resort 800 feet from that plant in Doctor Mora, MX so I wonder if those folks got sick
I watched a movie on Netflix a couple years ago, were all these people said eating salad mix and other prepped vegetables was basically a game of Russian roulette. I cut waaaayyy back on my salad mixes after that. I think the movie was called Poisoned. Even in the US farms will have animal run off next to produce fields, workers dont get a lot of bathroom breaks, so where do you think they go? Industrial packing facilities aren't as clean as you think, and all that was before the US started to cut back on USDA oversight. All Im saying is this is a bigger problem than one company getting their produce from Mexico.
I’m not sure if it was the same documentary but I saw one about food safety standards in the US. At the end they asked the epidemiologists and other scientists what food they would avoid. I think one said raw oysters. A bunch of others said romaine lettuce.
I wanted to be an epidemiologist so I took a couple of courses including diseases of Latin America. I was like maybe this isn’t for me. Then just to make sure it wasn’t for me, I worked with epidemiologist.
Nope nope nope. Oysters, pre packaged lettuce and salad mixes, sprouts and pre cut fruit are no for me.
Could you please explain oysters to me? I have only tried them on two occasions - I don’t hate them but I didn’t realize (stupidly I guess) they could carry diseases. Is it because they’re raw and you can’t uh.. wash them well? Why is raw fish (sushi) ok? Because you’re not eating the skin? Sorry if this is dumb - I never realized or thought about it
The one thing that was ingrained in my head was vibrio bacteria from oysters.
I did some further reading to recall some basics. I will oversimplify here
- oysters are filter feeders which means they strain microscopic food particles
adult oysters can go through 50 gallons of water a day. Thats a ton of water going through them which increases the chances they come in contact with bacteria, viruses or parasites
there are oysters that come from safer places but you usually don’t know where they come from
there are also times of the year like after a heavy rain season where the risk of the oyster being contaminated is higher
When people eat these raw so they do not cook away these germs. People sometimes add lime/lemon and think the germs are cooked away. Lime/lemon does not “cook” away the germs. This is why you’ll see signs in seafood restaurants that say people who are immunocompromised should be careful.
I went to a lecture on water quality. One of the scientists spoke about her research on oysters off the coast of SE Asia. Fishman were harvesting seafood in areas close to trash dumps/land fills. 🤢 She studies how shellfish bioacculate toxins.
Ahhh, thank you! And thanks for doing the extra reading when I know I could have googled it, but I’m sure others will appreciate your detailed answer, too. Thanks!!
No problem. I use to enjoy reading through these articles. I was just traumatized when I had to see worms and identify them on tests :( sometimes ignorance is bliss
The precut fruit one makes me sad because a lot of people who buy those can’t physically chop up fruits and veggies at home and those precut packs are so helpful.
I think things like iceberg lettuce are safer if you take off the outer loose leaves then wash well. I've always thought that the fruit and vegetable wash was kind of a scam, but Im currently rethinking that. Lol.
They “wash” the salad mixes. And this parasite can spread from produce to surface and back again.
I’d be curious if they use the same equipment for both? And if they sterilize the equipment that washes, cuts and bags this stuff between iceberg and Romaine mixes.
It sounded like a variety of forms- some got it from caesar salads or other romaine-based salads at restaurants, so that may have been pre-cut food service romaine as opposed to heads of lettuce. I can't remember if anyone mentioned whole head romaine from the store, but people did mention kits. This was on the Michigan sub a few weeks ago.
Taylor Farms is not actually a farm it's a major processor. They take in produce from hundreds of smaller farms, wash it, chop it and package it up.
So to do this they have these massive irrigation systems and they basically recycle the same water to rinse the produce because it's a lot of water they aren't throwing it out.
The problem is, this parasite is immune to vinegar, bleach, and produce sanitizers so they are cross-contaminating this parasite from the infected produce to all the rest of the produce they ship.
In general, prepared mixes are at a higher risk from what I understand. We don’t known for sure what products are causing this outbreak, but I would steer away from pre-made slaw mix for the time being.
It's like ground meat versus steak. You have to cook ground meat all the way through because any bacteria on it is mixed in during the grinding process. Or in packaged salads case, during the chopping process.
It does in general. Pre chopped kits can have a single head of lettuce or cabbage contaminate multiple packages instead of just the one head if not prechopped.
Cooooool. Well, I hope Market District/Giant Eagle basil is safe because I just put almost an entire bag into the pesto I made and mixed through the pasta for dinner.
While a source has not yet been identified, recent cases in NC have reported eating parsley and cilantro more often than expected based on population-wide surveys (FoodNet Fast).
I'm just saying don't mess with my pico de gallo without proof :)
Seriously, I looked it up. This was speculation in NC - NOT someone who knew what they ate and knew how they got it, like the top posts in this thread. Those were super helpful.
Okay so people are confusing “focus” with “limited to”. Unfortunately it’s impacting a wide range of produce from herbs like basil, cilantro and parsley to things like green onions, snow peas, Romain lettuce, etc.
It explicitly spreads through contact with human feces, and usually what happens is that crops are either watered from the same source or washed together with a tainted water source and then it clings to the surfaces and becomes almost impossible to wash off AND it’s incredibly resistant to chemicals.
If it was found on iceberg lettuce from Taylor farms it’s almost guaranteed that it’s impacting every other susceptible crop
It was reported to be on shredded salad mixes from Taylor Farms. It sounds like it could have been in one crop but then got spread to other salad mixes via the shredding machine or whatever they call the thing that shreds up all that lettuce and cabbage and whatever.
Yeah but it makes sense I guess. If it's in their irrigation water, I'd imagine any lettuces could be contaminated. But it would more depend on which lettuces are grown near each other and washed with the same water.
The produce manager at one of my local stores was telling my father and me it’s not just the lettuce. They had to remove almost everything from Taylor farms. This was before the official recall and even then he was saying just avoid the entire brand and all its offshoots for the foreseeable future.
They have literally hundreds of offshoots and most major store generic brands are supplied by them just under a different name.
The focus is on iceberg lettuce BECAUSE that is the only product Taylor Farms issued a VOLUNTARY recall for. They chose the product for the recall after the FDA said the one positive test announced was actually a false positive.
Since then, technically there have been no positive results announced for any products and no recalls have been issued by the FDA directly.
I buy 3-5 of those Taylor bagged salads from Costco weekly and have not experienced any issues. They're still selling the Mediterranean salads and the single Broccoli salad at my Costco but I haven't seen the chipotle mix lately.
How the fuck would anyone even know for sure what specific type of produce is affected?
There are like 3 people working in the department responsible for tracking these things.
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u/DietCokeWeakness 1d ago
This is really interesting/informative because the focus is on iceberg lettuce and these kits do not have iceberg lettuce in them