Federal authorities identified a California farm on Thursday as the likely source of E-coli contamination in romaine lettuce that triggered a rare nationwide advisory in November to avoid the leafy green.
At the same time, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration cautioned that the outbreak is still not over. Investigators will continue to visit other farms, processing plants and distribution centers for other possible sources.
Since the outbreak began, at least 59 people have been sickened in the U.S. and Canada. Some 23 have been hospitalized, including two people who experienced kidney failure, but there have been no confirmed deaths.
Sediment in a ground-water irrigation reservoir at Adam Brothers Family Farms in Santa Barbara County tested positive for the strain of E. coli that prompted the advisory just before Thanksgiving from the CDC and FDA.
After a federal and state investigation, that advisory was later modified and consumers were told not to buy lettuce from six California Central Coast counties. On Thursday, that do-not-buy-from list was reduced to three California counties: Monterey, San Bonito and Santa Barbara. Officials also said that if a package or head of romaine lettuce does not have a label stating where it was grown or the date it was packaged, it should be avoided.
Romaine has been returning slowly to store shelves and restaurants in Atlanta and elsewhere in recent weeks.
The original sample containing the strain of E. coli was taken on Nov. 27, just a week after romaine was cleared from store produce bins and refrigerators across the U.S. and Canada. Investigators from the CDC, FDA and California Department of Agriculture are returning to the farm in the coming days for more testing to try to determine the source of the contaminated reservoir water. The strain of E. coli found there is present in the feces of domestic and wild animals. It can also be present in soil additives , officials said.
Officials are also trying to determine how a farm that grows other green vegetables, from celery to broccoli to iceberg lettuce, could have contamination in just one product.
“That’s not dissimilar to what we found in Yuma, yet we had no evidence that any other types of lettuce were affected,” said Dr. Stephen Ostroff, the FDA’s deputy commissioner of foods and veterinary medicine. “We are just as intensively interested in answering that question.”
Last spring a deadly outbreak of E. coli was traced back to irrigation canals that serviced several farms in Yuma, Az. Officials never confirmed the original source of the contamination even after a lengthy investigation.
The farm owners are cooperating with the investigation, said Ostroff, adding it was too early to say that Adam Brothers Family Farms was the sole source of the outbreak.
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