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posted by chromas on Thursday August 09 2018, @01:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the 💩 dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Manure from a high-density cattle farm that holds upward of 100,000 cows may have been the source of a deadly Escherichia coli strain that found its way onto romaine lettuce and caused a massive outbreak earlier this year. That's according to a new hypothesis announced this week by the Food and Drug Administration.

The bacterium behind the outbreak was a particularly nasty strain of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O157:H7 that produces only Shiga toxin type 2 (Stx2), the more toxic of two types of toxins E. coli tends to carry. Stx2 causes cell death, triggers immune responses, and leads to the destruction of red blood cells, which can damage the kidneys.

Such Shiga-toxin producing E. coli are shed from the guts of animals (particularly cattle) and are spread by feces.

Traceback investigations by federal authorities linked the illnesses to romaine lettuce grown in the Yuma region of Arizona. Further work found that the outbreak stain was present in canal water running along farms. That pointed experts to the idea that tainted canal water was used for irrigation, literally showering crops with deadly germs.

In the new update, the FDA notes that a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is located nearby to a cluster of romaine lettuce farms. Such high-density farms are notorious for causing water quality issues. Thus, poopy runoff from the CAFO may have contaminated the canal water, which then made its way onto vegetables directly through irrigation or some other indirect route. The FDA noted that it has been pondering other hypotheses, but it didn't outline what those were.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @03:04PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @03:04PM (#719403)

    How can you tell if your cow was only fed plant matter? If the feed included cow parts there can be trouble...see mad cow disease.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Thursday August 09 2018, @03:43PM (1 child)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday August 09 2018, @03:43PM (#719426)

    You're telling me I can't trust Agribusiness to look after my best interests? pshaw. Next you'll be telling me Wall Street bankers can crash the economy with no repercussions.

    Fake news!

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:44PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday August 09 2018, @05:44PM (#719499) Journal

      You're telling me I can't trust Agribusiness to look after my best interests?

      Don't worry, the Trump admin is on it! Once they destroy the FDA you won't know it was Agribusiness' fault next time.