Food-safety officials have had a stressful few months. Between August and October, an outbreak of E. coli (coh-lie) bacteria in raw spinach led to three deaths and sickened more than 200 people in 26 states. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) helped stop the spread.
"Our job is detective work. A lot of science is solving problems and solving puzzles," Jack Guzewich told TFK. He coordinates FDA efforts when part of the nation's food supply is contaminated. "We try to figure out what it is that is making people sick. Then, we try to alert people so more people don't get sick," Guzewich says. "Finally, we try to understand how that outbreak occurred so that it won't happen again."
During the recent outbreak, the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state agencies teamed up to talk to patients. "By interviewing them, we found out what they had in common was having eaten bagged spinach," says Guzewich. That's when the FDA warned the nation to steer clear of spinach and set out to track down the source of the tainted vegetable.
Investigators uncovered a key clue in an infected person's kitchen. "People still had bags [of spinach] in their refrigerators," says Guzewich. "So we had the actual container with the brand name and where it was packaged." That information led investigators to the source of the bad spinach, four fields in California.
Investigators are still trying to determine how the E. coli bacteria, commonly found in manure, infected the spinach. The FDA won't close the case until they know why it happened and are confident it won't happen again. But there's no excuse to boycott bagged spinach anymore. It's back on grocery-store shelves now that the ban has been lifted.