Here's What's Wrong With Romaine Lettuce

Someromaine lettuce is safe to eat again.

The FDA and CDCannounced on November 28that they have narrowed down the recentE.

colioutbreak to lettuce grown in fields (not greenhouses) in California.

That means that lettuce from Florida or from most local farmstands is probably safe to eat.

But romaines problems arent over.

What is it about romaine lettuce?

colioutbreak in romaine lettuceearlier this year, and there have been others in the past.

There will probably be more in the future.

Vegetables, including lettuce, are amajor source of foodborne illness.

A few of the factors working against romaine here:

Lettuce isnt (usually) cooked before eating.

Cooking kills bacteria, so raw veggies are riskier.

Romaine and other greens arehard to effectively wash. Youre as likely to spread the bacteria as to remove it.

Pathogens can come in on contaminated water.

Romaine is really popular.

Kale probably has its outbreaks too, but more people are eating romaine.

That just means outbreaks are bigger and more noticeable.

Packaged salad greens have an additional problem: they get washed, often mixed together with other farms greens.

Small, local farms are great in many ways, but theyre no insurance against foodborne illnesses.

The reason you never hear about huge outbreaks coming from small farms issimply that theyre small.

For every reported case, there are likely many more that flew under the radar.)

But is it safer in general?

Sort of, but maybe not in the way you think.

The truth is that the water testing rule was proposed in 2011, and keeps getting delayed.

It would have taken effect this year, but has been pushed back to 2022,Wired reports.

Testing alone isnt going to stop lettuce-borne outbreaks.

But she says there are likely problems on several levels that make lettuce outbreaks more likely to happen.

Its not always labeled well enough to be traceable, but that will change soon.

When this outbreak was first announced, the warning was thatallromaine was suspect.

Florida romaine growershad to destroy thousands of pounds of perfectly good lettuce.

Fortunately, the FDA is starting to require that romaine be marked with the place it was grown.

By now, theyve figured out the lettuce that made people sick was from certain parts of California.

(There is alist here of counties to avoid.)

Heres hoping that better tracking can help outbreaks be traced faster.