Freshway Lettuce E. coli Outbreak Update
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued its final update in the Freshway Foods lettuce E. coli outbreak that infected at least 33 people in New York, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
Unchanged in the report is the fact that three individuals from New York developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) from their E. coli O145 infections. This includes two teen-age students from Wappingers Falls, New York. Illnesses were reported in Wappingers Falls and nearby Hopewell Junction in Dutchess County, New York, not far from Poughkeepsie.
The third lettuce HUS victim is a freshman at Daemen College in Amherst, New York. She has retained law firm Pritzker Olsen to represent her in litigation against responsible parties, including Ohio-based Freshway Foods, the distributor of shredded romaine lettuce implicated as the cause of this outbreak.
CDC’s final update increases the number of confirmed cases from 23 to 26, including a new case in Pennsylvania. Seven other probable cases are included as outbreak cases. The CDC said the newly reported case in Pennsylvania does not reflect expansion of the outbreak but retrospective identification using computerized DNA fingerprinting.
The health agency continues to state that all the contaminated lettuce associated with the Freshway Foods E. coli outbreak came from a single farm, unnamed. Other reports have placed the farm in Yuma, Arizona, the largest producing region of winter lettuce in the United States.
The Food and Drug Administration is still working with state partners to determine where in the distribution chain the point of contamination likely occurred.
Here is the CDC list of where the outbreak was known to hit: Michigan (11 confirmed and 2 probable); New York (5 confirmed and 2 probable); Ohio (8 confirmed and 3 probable); Pennsylvania (1 confirmed), and Tennessee (1 confirmed).
