wrote:
David Kaye wrote:
JC wrote:

I have to explain that post?

Yes. You blamed the New Orleans levee failures on Bill Clinton, yet
these failures happened 5 years into Bush's administration and after a
severe cutback in federal infrastructure funding. I normally don't
respond to your posts because it appears you come from another planet.
But I wasn't going to let this one slip by.

Could it possibly be the cronies Shrub put in charge of FEMA? You have
to wonder how many other posts are filled with the likes of Heckuvajob
Brownie.

This E coli fiasco is a prime example of government that doesn't work.
However, that is the goal of Republicans. They say government doesn't
work, so they do their best not to make it work. It is a self
fulfilling prophecy.

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate...s/15552424.htm

Posted on Tue, Sep. 19, 2006
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Spinach growers were told to improve safety
Current E. coli outbreak not the first linked to California growers
By ANDREW BRIDGES
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Federal health officials told California farmers to
improve produce safety in a pointed warning letter last November -
nearly a year before the multistate E. coli outbreak linked to spinach.

In fact, the current food-poisoning episode is the 20th since 1995
linked to spinach or lettuce, the Food and Drug Administration says.

Though state and federal officials have traced the current outbreak to
a California company's fresh spinach, they haven't pinpointed the
source of the bacteria that have killed one person and sickened more
than 100 others.

The FDA is still warning consumers not to eat fresh spinach.

There is no evidence of tampering in the outbreak, FDA spokeswoman
Susan Bro said Monday. That leaves a broad range of other possible
sources, including contaminated irrigation water that's been a
problem in California's Salinas Valley. The area on California's
central coast produces much of the U.S. spinach crop.

There have been 19 other food-poisoning outbreaks since 1995 linked to
lettuce and spinach, according to the FDA. At least eight were traced
to produce grown in the Salinas Valley. The outbreaks involved more
than 400 cases of sickness and two deaths.

In 2004 and again in 2005, the FDA's top food safety official warned
California farmers they needed to do more to increase the safety of the
fresh leafy greens they grow.

"In light of continuing outbreaks, it is clear that more needs to be
done," the FDA's Robert Brackett wrote in a Nov. 4, 2005, letter.

Suggested actions included discarding any produce that comes into
contact with floodwaters. Rivers and creeks in the Salinas watershed
are known to be periodically contaminated with E. coli, Brackett said.

Meanwhile, the FBI is monitoring the situation, said spokesman Rich
Kolko. He called it a routine and precautionary measure, not an
indication of suspicious activity.

The FDA's Bro dismissed a claim by Natural Selection Foods, the
company linked to the outbreak, that its organic spinach products had
been cleared of suspicion.

"The FDA has not cleared any products from the list and continues to
recommend consumers avoid eating fresh spinach products," she said.

Natural Selection has recalled 34 brands of fresh spinach products,
distributed throughout the United States as well as to Canada and
Mexico. The company said the manufacturing codes turned over to health
officials from packages of spinach that had infected patients all were
from non-organic spinach. The company packages both organic and
conventionally grown spinach in separate areas at its San Juan
Bautista, Calif. plant.

The FDA and California Department of Health Services were reviewing
irrigation methods, harvest conditions and other practices at farms
possibly involved.

The spinach could have been contaminated in the field or during
processing. About 74 percent of the fresh-market spinach grown in he
U.S. comes from California, according to the California Farm Bureau
Federation.

E. coli cases linked to the tainted spinach have been reported in 20
states, with Wisconsin reporting the most cases, including the death of
a 77-year-old woman.

The Illinois Department of Public Health said Monday an elderly woman
hospitalized with kidney failure is the state's first confirmed case
in the spinach-linked outbreak. Other states reporting cases were
California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan,
Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.