U.S. officials searching for the source of an E. coli outbreak that may have killed three people said on Friday they had found "situations of concern" at farms and food processing plants in California but cleared spinach grown elsewhere in the country.
The Food and Drug Administration said 166 people in 25 states had been sickened in the outbreak, with one death. State health officials reported on Friday a 2-year-old boy from Idaho and an 86-year-old woman from Maryland had died and said they suspected E. coli from spinach was to blame. FDA officials said they could not confirm that link.
Federal and state officials were inspecting nine farms in California's Salinas Valley, where the outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 is suspected to have originated.
"There are some situations of concern, may I say, that would warrant some possible correction in the near future," Mark Roh, acting regional food and drug director for the FDA's Pacific Region, told reporters. He declined to give details.
Roh and Dr. David Acheson of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition said inspectors were looking at 10 fields representing six growers in California's Salinas Valley, looking for evidence of contaminated water, equipment or other signs of poor hygiene.
"All the farms that we have been visiting have been linked somehow to the illnesses," Roh said.
"We know that spinach grown in the rest of the United States ... has not been implicated in the current E. coli 0157 outbreak," Acheson added.
"Therefore, the public can be confident that spinach not grown in the implicated areas is safe."
He said the food industry was working with the FDA to get safe spinach back on store shelves.
State health officials were recording reports of diarrheal illness without a fever, which could indicate E. coli infection. Acheson said it could take up to two more weeks to hear about all the possible cases.
TAKING SAMPLES
Each time a case is reported, doctors must take fecal samples to be sent for testing. Field officers ask questions about what the patient ate, where the food was bought and then search for the actual packages, which can be traced back to the farms.
"The current information that we have from the bags we have allowed us to narrow it down from nationwide to the state of California to three counties," Acheson said. "The intention is to narrow it further within these three counties."
Growers pledged to help find and plug safety gaps.
The Produce Marketing Association, the largest group representing companies along supply chains for fruits, vegetables and flowers, estimates farmers and food processors may lose up to $100 million a month if consumers stop eating spinach.
"Obviously there was a breakdown in the system somewhere," added Dave Kranz, spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation, the state's largest farm organization.
"Now we need to find out if the system was flawed ... or if it was a breakdown that can be corrected."
At least two Democratic congressmen raised questions about farm and food safety regulation.
"Quick action is needed at the federal level. Today, we have 12 different federal agencies stumbling over each other to ensure the safety of our food supply," Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin told a news conference held with consumer and food safety advocates.
"I am concerned that FDA has not conducted adequate inspections of the plants that process spinach and other produce," California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman wrote in a letter to the FDA.
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